lethargy 2.1.0

A minimal library to make your option-parsing easier.

Lethargy: Terse & tiny command-line option library

Lethargy was born out of frustration, like most of my projects. It gets out of your way as soon as possible to let you get on with the actual logic. No bullshit, no magic, no objects to understand, you just call a function.

I write a lot of small scripts to get my job done faster, and manually working with options is a pain. Existing libraries are extremely verbose or just don't feel good to use. Lethargy is designed to make writing scripts easier and faster, and to reduce effort to maintain them.

• No boilerplate. Headaches are directly proportional to lines of code.
• No bloat. Small API surface area, very little to learn.
• No ambiguity. Lethargy raises exceptions instead of getting your code into bad state.
• Clear errors. Great error messages and context managers for dealing with them.
• Flexible. You're not locked in to any styles or paradigms.

Lethargy is completely imperative and is not a framework. If you are building a complete CLI or want automatic help commands, you're better off using Click — a fantastic, declarative CLI framework.

Installation

You can use pip to install lethargy. It's tiny and only depends on the standard library.

pip install lethargy

Usage

import lethargy

# Accepts the option '--bytes <int>'. Show the error nicely if it goes wrong.
with lethargy.show_errors():
    n_bytes = lethargy.take_opt('bytes', 1, int) or 8

# Now the option and value have been removed from lethargy.argv
with lethargy.expect(IndexError, reason="Missing required argument: [DIR]"):
    directory = lethargy.argv[1]

...

Getting Started

This is both a tutorial and the documentation. All examples assume you've got import lethargy at the top.

FLAGS

Options can be flags. True if present, False if not.

# --debug
debug = lethargy.take_opt('debug')

print(debug)

$ python example.py --debug
True
$ python example.py
False

NAMES

Options can have more than one name. Instead of a string, use a list of strings. Names are case-sensitive.

# -v|--verbose
verbose = lethargy.take_opt(['v', 'verbose'])

print(verbose)

$ python example.py -v
True
$ python example.py --verbose
True

Learn more about option names

Option names are automatically generated. "use headers" becomes --use-headers, and "I" becomes -I.

If you provide an explicit name (starting with a non-alphanumeric character, such as -, / or +), the name is stripped and treated as literal.

# -Enable
enabled = lethargy.take_opt('-Enable')
print(enabled)

$ python example.py -Enable
True
$ python example.py
False

Names are always case sensitive. -Enable ≠ -enable

$ python example.py -enable
False

---

ARGUMENTS

Options can take arguments, too. They can take any amount.

# -o|--output <value>
output = lethargy.take_opt(['o', 'output'], 1)

print(output)

$ python example.py -o out.txt
out.txt
$ python example.py
None

Learn more about arguments

If there are fewer values for the option than the number given, lethargy.ArgsError will be raised. See Error Handling for how to present this nicely.

$ python example.py --output
Traceback (most recent call last):
  [...]
lethargy.errors.ArgsError: expected 1 argument for '-o|--output <value>', found none

---

GREEDINESS

Options can be variadic (greedy). Use ... instead of a number to take every value following the option.

# -i|--ignore [value]...
ignored = lethargy.take_opt(['i', 'ignore'], ...)

for pattern in ignored:
    print(pattern)

$ python example.py --ignore .git .vscode .DS_Store
.git
.vscode
.DS_Store
$ python example.py --ignore experiments
experiments
$ python example.py
$ ▏

Learn more about variadic options

Because variadic options will take every argument, including values that look like other options, you should try and take these last (after taking the fixed-count options).

$ python example.py --ignore "*.pyc" --exceptions some.pyc
*.pyc
--exceptions
some.pyc

---

UNPACKING

Unpack multiple values into separate variables. If the option wasn't present, they'll all be None.

# --name <value> <value> <value>
first, middle, last = lethargy.take_opt('name', 3)

print(f'Hi, {first}!')

$ python example.py --name Dwight Kurt Schrute
Hi, Dwight!
$ python example.py
Hi, None!

DEFAULTS

Set sensible defaults. Use the or keyword and your default value(s).

# -h|--set-hours <value> <value>
start, finish = lethargy.take_opt(['set hours', 'h'], 2) or "9AM", "5PM"

print(f'Employee now works {start} to {finish}')

$ python example.py
Employee works 9AM to 5PM
$ python example.py --set-hours 8AM 4PM
Employee works 8AM to 4PM

TYPES & CONVERSION

Convert your option's values. Use a function or type as the final argument. Defaults aren't converted.

# --date-ymd <int> <int> <int>
y, m, d = lethargy.take_opt('date ymd', 3, int) or 1970, 1, 1

from datetime import datetime
date = datetime(y, m, d)
delta = datetime.today() - date
print(f'it has been {delta.days} days since {date}')

$ python example.py --date-ymd 1999 10 9
it has been 7500 days since 1999-10-09 00:00:00

ERROR HANDLING

Give clear error messages. Lucky for you, lethargy's errors are extremely descriptive.

with lethargy.show_errors():
    n_bytes = lethargy.take_opt('bytes', 1, int) or 8
    start, end = lethargy.take_opt(['r', 'range'], 2, int) or 0, 10

$ python example.py --range 20
Expected 2 arguments for option '-r|--range <int> <int>', but found 1 ('20')
$ python example.py --bytes
Expected 1 argument for option '--bytes <int>', but found none
$ python example.py --bytes wrong
Option '--bytes <int>' received an invalid value: 'wrong'

Learn more about error handling

Calling fail() will exit with status code 1. You can optionally use a message.

Lethargy provides two context managers for easier error handling. These share similar behaviour, but are separate to make intent clearer.

with lethargy.expect(*errors: Exception, reason: Optional[str] = None)

When one of the given exceptions is raised, it calls fail() to exit and print the message.

with lethargy.show_errors()

Same behaviour as expect, but specifically for exceptions from lethargy.

Note that exceptions raised during value conversions will be caught by show_errors().

You can access the original exception that caused a TransformError with the __cause__ attribute (see the Python Built-in Exceptions docs).

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Contributing

Any and all contributions are absolutely welcome. Feel free to open an issue or just jump straight to a PR. Let's discuss and make this the best it can be! 😄

License

Lethargy is released under the MIT license.