Plumbum: Pythonic Shell Combinators

https://github.com/tomerfiliba/plumbum

by mnazim • 14 years ago

76 22 14 years ago

github.com

mariocesar• 14 years ago

The coolest thing I see this year!

friggeri• 14 years ago

Someone needs to explain to me in what parallel universe

    (sudo[ifconfig["-a"]] | grep["-i", "loop"]) & FG

is more readable than

    sudo ifconfig -a | grep -i loop &

tav• 14 years ago

It's not. The reasons that one might use `plumbum` are similar to the reasons that one might use `fabric` instead of just running local/remote shell scripts, i.e.

- Ability to leverage the richness of Python to pre/post-process the inputs/outputs from other shell commands.

- Easier to parameterise and maintain.

- Familiarity with Python over the likes of bash, zsh, etc.

gbog2• 14 years ago

Em, the fabric version would be much more readable I'm not mistaken:

local("ls - l | grep foo")

sirclueless• 14 years ago

It's definitely not, until you need to access the stdout of that command programmatically. Plumbum replaces the subprocess module (and os.system etc.), not shell scripts, despite their motto. It might displace shell scripts, because once you can use lists, maps, functions with actual arguments, etc. why would you go back? But it's not going to replace shell one-liners any time soon.

tomerfiliba3• 14 years ago

you probably didn't want the "& FG" part, as it would go to the screen and run "in the foreground", e.g., make you wait. but anyway, as other people have said, it aims at providing an object oriented replacement for shell scripts, etc.

seliopou• 14 years ago

This is not an object-oriented replacement for shell scripts. This is a shell script DSL embedded in Python.

If you want to use Python to manipulate the input or output of shell commands, then write a Python script that reads from stdin and writes to stdout, and use the shell to insert that script into the appropriate point in your command chain. It's the UNIX way.

jal278• 14 years ago

This reminds me of when I first saw drop-box: Immediate recognition of the pain it will save me. I often hack up kludges that approximate this -- os.system calls that pipe to a file, then I read and parse the file. Good work.

robrenaud• 14 years ago

The commands module is now deprecated by the overly complicated subprocess module, but

     content = commands.getoutput(x)

is much better than

     os.system(x + ' > foo') 
     content = open('foo', 'r').read()

icebraining• 14 years ago

The subprocess mode is really not that complicated. Your example can be written as:

    content = subprocess.check_output(x, shell=True)

colinmarc• 14 years ago

Some really clever tricks here. I particularly like the __getitem__ one. I'm simultaneously excited and filled with horror. =)

gbog2• 14 years ago

I think this attempt and other simile are fun but I doubt I would use them for serious things. Maybe it should be done the other way: like markdown is an extension of html, we could have an extension of shell with python syntax.

tveita• 14 years ago

I'm sure it's convenient, but I wouldn't call this kind of operator overloading "pythonic".

Not to say being pythonic is always better, but some of these tricks don't even seem that practical. Why "& FG" instead of .fg()? Using division for joining paths is cute, but why not use '+', the conventional append operator?

tomerfiliba3• 14 years ago

&FG and &BG are just shell-ish shortcuts. you can always use .popen() or .run()

ehosca• 14 years ago

thats Lead ....

cing• 14 years ago

While we're on the topic, here's another shell scripting package for Python: https://github.com/amoffat/pbs

tomerfiliba3• 14 years ago

see http://readthedocs.org/docs/plumbum/en/latest/#credits

cheatercheater2• 14 years ago

Haskell has done it long ago and much better:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3966630

jhales• 14 years ago

I'm not quite sure I understand the value added over "!ls" etc on iPython. Is this module primarily for use on the vanilla interpreter?

Plumbum: Pythonic Shell Combinators

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