style50

This is style50, a tool with which code can be checked against the CS50 style guide.

Installation

pip install style50

In order to style check C, C++, or Java code, a recent version (>=14.0.0) of clang-format must be installed. clang-format may be downloaded here.

Windows

Along with most of CS50's command line tools, style50 supports being run on Windows but only via the Linux Subsystem in Windows 10. After launching it, style50 can be installed using the pip command above.

Usage

usage: style50 [-h] [-o MODE] [-y] [-i] [-v] [-V] [-E] [--ignore PATTERN]
               [--clang-format-style STYLE]
               FILE [FILE ...]

positional arguments:
FILE                  file or directory to lint

options:
-h, --help            show this help message and exit
-o, --output MODE     output mode, which can be character (default), split,
                      unified, score, json, html, or format
-y, --side-by-side    show side-by-side diff (equivalent to -o split)
-i, --in-place        rewrite files in place with style50 formatting
-v, --verbose         print full tracebacks of errors
-V, --version         show program's version number and exit
-E, --extensions      print supported file extensions (as JSON list) and
                      exit
--ignore PATTERN      paths/patterns to be ignored
--clang-format-style STYLE
                      clang-format style string or file:// URI (overrides
                      default CS50 config)

STYLE50_IGNORE is also supported as a comma-separated environment variable fallback for ignore patterns.

character, split, and unified modes output character-based, side-by-side, and unified (respectively) diffs between the inputted file and the correctly styled version. score outputs the raw percentage of correct (unchanged) lines, json outputs a JSON object containing structured results, html outputs browser-readable results, and format outputs only the formatted code.

Common examples

# Diff-only mode (default)
style50 foo.c
style50 foo.c bar.py
style50 *.c *.py

# In-place rewrite
style50 -i foo.c
style50 -i foo.c bar.py
style50 -i *.c *.py

# Side-by-side diff
style50 -y foo.c bar.py

# Ignore files/patterns
style50 --ignore "*/.*" foo.c bar.py

# Emit only formatted code (single file only)
style50 -o format foo.c

`--output` modes

--output supports:

character (default)
split
unified
score
json
html
format

`-i` and `--output`

-i/--in-place rewrites files and therefore cannot be combined with --output or --side-by-side.

Language Support

style50 currently supports the following languages:

C++
C
Python
Javascript
Java
HTML
CSS
SQL

Adding a new language

Adding a new language is very simple. Language checks are encoded as classes which inherit from the StyleCheck base class (see style50/languages.py for more real-world examples). The following is a template for style checks which allows style50 to check the imaginary FooBar language for style.

import re

from style50 import StyleCheck, Style50


class FooBar(StyleCheck):

    # REQUIRED: this property informs style50 what file extensions this
    # check should be run on (in this case, all .fb and .foobar files)
    extensions = ["fb", "foobar"]

    # REQUIRED: should return a correctly styled version of `code`
    def style(self, code):
        # All FooBar code is perfectly styled
        return code

    # OPTIONAL: should return the number of comments in `code`.
    # If this function is not defined, `style50` will not warn the student about
    # too few comments
    def count_comments(self, code):
        # A real-world, check would need to worry about not counting '#' in string-literals
        return len(re.findall(r"#.*", code))

All classes which inherit from StyleCheck are automatically registered with style50's Style50 class, making style50 easily extensible. Adding the following to the above code creates a script which checks the code that style50 already does as well as FooBar programs.

    # Style check the current directory, printing a unified diff
    Style50("unified").run(["."])

Intended Audience
- Education
Programming Language
- Python :: 3
Topic
- Education
- Utilities

Metadata

Intended Audience
- Education
Programming Language
- Python :: 3
Topic
- Education
- Utilities

Release files for style50 3.0.0

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Source distribution (sdist)

Source distribution for style50 3.0.0
File	Size	Uploaded
style50-3.0.0.tar.gz	28.9 kB	Mar 21, 2026	Details

Built distribution (wheel)

Table of built distributions (wheels) for style50 3.0.0
File	Interpreter	ABI	Platform	Reset
style50-3.0.0-py3-none-any.whl 26.7 kB Mar 21, 2026	Python 3	none	any	Details

Total release size: 55.6 kB

Release files / style50-3.0.0.tar.gz

Download URL	style50-3.0.0.tar.gz
Size	28.9 kB
Tags	Source
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`225ab8fa0deabd4d157d64442cbbcc6d6d8ded538a4c9af8402db0f233d5a99f`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`acdd171b685bfb0dcd8d3993d9636f961d72c6a2e637108379523dd0f0987e35`
Upload date	Mar 21, 2026
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`twine/6.1.0 CPython/3.13.7`

Release files / style50-3.0.0-py3-none-any.whl

Download URL	style50-3.0.0-py3-none-any.whl
Size	26.7 kB
Tags	Python 3
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`4f9768ff3326bbb1916c26935b375a020d4cbcc960d6c5dd0e782e7175610421`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`2644b49a0900b88415acceacd773c6495a669638e6baee3d04735b6af9565690`
Upload date	Mar 21, 2026
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`twine/6.1.0 CPython/3.13.7`