pysh-lib 0.0.2

Pythonically simple alternative to shell scripts and subprocess

Pysh is a library for running external commands from a Python program, with the usual concision and clarity that Python achieves in other domains.

Usage

Simple commands are simple:

from pysh import check_cmd, try_cmd

check_cmd('gpg --decrypt --output {} {}', cleartext_path, cryptotext_path)

if not try_cmd('git diff-index --quiet HEAD'):
    raise RuntimeError("worktree not clean")

repo_root = slurp_cmd('git rev-parse --show-toplevel')
# "slurp" strips trailing newlines, just like shell `$(...)`

Writing command lines

Command lines offer a format-like minilanguage, powered by pysh.shwords. The format string is automatically split to form the command's list of arguments, providing shell-script-like convenience... but the interpolated data never affects the split, avoiding classic shell-script bugs.

from pysh import shwords, check_cmd

shwords('rm -rf {tmpdir}/{userdoc}', tmpdir='/tmp', userdoc='1 .. 2')
# -> ['rm', '-rf', '/tmp/1 .. 2']

check_cmd('rm -rf {tmpdir}/{userdoc}', tmpdir='/tmp', userdoc='1 .. 2')
# removes `/tmp/1 .. 2` -- not `/tmp/1`, `..`, and `2`

A format-minilanguage extension {...!@} substitutes in a whole list:

check_cmd('grep -C2 TODO -- {!@}', files)

Each function taking a command line also has a twin, named with _f, that opts into f-string-like behavior:

from pysh import check_cmd, check_cmd_f

check_cmd_f('{compiler} {cflags!@} -c {source_file} -o {object_file}')

# equivalent to:
check_cmd('{} {!@} -c {} -o {}',
          compiler, cflags, source_file, object_file)

Pipelines

Pipelines are composed with the | operator. Each stage (or "filter") in the pipeline can be an external command, or Python code.

Most often pipelines are built from the filters offered in the pysh.cmd module. You can consume the output with pysh.slurp:

import pysh
from pysh import cmd

hello = pysh.slurp(cmd.echo(b'hello world')
                   | cmd.run('tr h H'))
# -> b'Hello world'

Or iterate through it:

for commit_id in (cmd.run('git rev-list -n10 -- {!@}', files)
                  | cmd.splitlines()):
    # ... gets last 10 commits touching `files`

You can also write filters directly, using the @pysh.filter decorator. See examples in the example/ tree. This is also the same API that all the filters in pysh.cmd are built on, so there are many examples there.