Rich Cleaner

Rich Cleaner is a zero-dependency, production-ready Python library and command-line interface (CLI) for stripping Rich markup formatting from text, strings, and files.

If you have logs or strings polluted with [bold red], [link=...], or [:smile:] and need pure, unformatted text without actually installing the heavy rich library, this tool handles it natively using a highly accurate state-machine parser.

Features

• Zero Dependencies: Built entirely on Python's standard library. Doesn't require rich to be installed.
• 100% Native Parsing: Accurately strips color codes, style tags, links, and emojis while safely preserving escaped brackets ([[ ]]).
• Robust CLI: Clean files in-place or traverse directories recursively to scrub entire log folders.
• Dry-Run Mode: Preview which files would be modified before touching anything.
• Safe: Automatically skips binary files or files with non-UTF-8 encodings.

Installation

Install directly via pip:

pip install rich-cleaner

Or, if installing from the source repository:

git clone https://github.com/cumulus13/rich-cleaner.git
cd rich-cleaner
pip install -e .

# or 

pip install git+https://github.com/cumulus13/rich-cleaner.git

Command-Line Usage (CLI)

Installing the package automatically registers the rich-cleaner command globally.

# Clean a single file in-place
rich-cleaner application.log

# See what would change in a directory without actually modifying files
rich-cleaner /var/logs/my_app --dry-run

# Recursively clean all .log files in a directory
rich-cleaner /var/logs/my_app --recursive --ext .log

# Quiet mode (only output errors)
rich-cleaner application.log --quiet

CLI Arguments

Library Usage (Python API)

You can easily use the core parser inside your own Python projects.

Clean a Simple String

from rich_cleaner import RichCleaner

cleaner = RichCleaner()

dirty_text = "✓ github [bold #00FFFF]Forking[/] [bold #FFAA00]repo[/] [bold #00FFFF]Successfully[/]"
clean_text = cleaner.clean_text(dirty_text)

print(clean_text)
# Output: ✓ github Forking repo Successfully

Clean a File Programmatically

from pathlib import Path
from rich_cleaner import RichCleaner

cleaner = RichCleaner()
target_file = Path("app_output.txt")

# Cleans the file in-place. Returns True if modifications were made.
was_modified = cleaner.clean_file(target_file)

Edge Cases Handled

The parser behaves exactly like Rich's internal syntax engine. It correctly parses and handles:

• Single tags: [bold], [red]
• Multi-word tags: [bold red on black]
• Hex & RGB codes: [#00FFFF], [rgb(255,0,0)]
• Closing tags: [/], [/bold]
• Hyperlinks: [link=https://example.com]Click Here[/link]
• Emojis: [:smile:]
• Escaped brackets (leaves them intact): [[Not a tag]] -> [Not a tag]

👤 Author & License

Author: Hadi Cahyadi (cumulus13@gmail.com)

Source: github.com/cumulus13/rich-cleaner

Support me on Patreon