coloredstrings 0.1.5

Colorize Different.

coloredstrings

Colorize Different

A tiny utility that patches Python's built-in str with convenient ANSI color / style helpers so you can write "hello".red() instead of juggling escape sequences or long constant concatenations. Inspired by the Rust text-colorizer crate — ergonomic, expressive, and surprisingly pleasant to type.

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Why use this? — Isn't patching str un-Pythonic?

Patching builtins is a controversial choice, and at first glance it may look un-Pythonic. Libraries like colorama require you to import constants and build strings by concatenation:

from colorama import Fore, Style

print(Fore.RED + "error: " + Style.RESET_ALL + "something went wrong")

That works fine, but it forces you to manage constants and remember to reset, and your code quickly becomes noisy with + and RESET tokens.

Another example using the termcolor package:

from termcolor import cprint

print(colored("error:", "red"), "something went wrong")

termcolor offers a nice function colored with a bunch of arguments, but personally, I still find it lacking.

With coloredstrings the color becomes a readable method on the string itself:

import coloredstrings

# `patched()` patches `str` to have awesome `red()` method
with coloredstrings.patched():
    print("error: ".red(), "something went wrong")

This reads more like natural prose and keeps color usage local to the value being displayed.

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Quick start — example usage

import coloredstrings

# Patched `str` methods are available only within the context
def warn(msg: str) -> None:
    with coloredstrings.patched():
        print("warning:".yellow().bold(), msg)

# Same idea, but using a decorator
@coloredstrings.patched
def info(msg: str) -> None:
    print("[info]:".blue(), msg)

# If you're brave enough and really want it, you can patch `str` globally
coloredstrings.patch()

print("ok".green())
print("warn".yellow().bold())
print("bad".red(), "on green".on_green())

# 24-bit RGB:
print("custom".rgb(123, 45, 200))

# 256-color:
print("teal-ish".color256(37))

# And don't forget to unpatch it afterwards
coloredstrings.unpatch()

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API (high level)

• patch() — attach methods to str

• unpatch() — remove the attached methods

• patched() - automatically calls patch() and unpatch() in a given context

• Color/style methods attached to str (call on any string):

  • Foreground colors: red(), green(), yellow(), blue(), magenta(), cyan(), white(), black(), bright_red()
  • Styles: bold(), dim(), italic(), underline(), inverse()
  • Background helpers: on_red(), on_green()
  • 24-bit color: rgb(r, g, b)
  • 256-color: color256(idx)

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Installation

Stable:

pip install coloredstrings

Latest:

pip install git+https://github.com/samedit66/coloredstrings.git

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Limitations

Under the hood coloredstrings uses forbiddenfruit package, as a result it also has the same limitations:

Forbbiden Fruit is tested on CPython 3.7-3.13. Since Forbidden Fruit is fundamentally dependent on the C API, this library won't work on other python implementations, such as Jython, pypy, etc.