#docopt

I am using `docopt`, which I reach for first when I need a Python CLI MVP, because it reduces boilerplate almost entirely down to just writing the `--help` text string.

(Naturally this post was created and updated through it. Basically ":w" to save changes in my text editor, two keys to switch from this file in my editor to my shell, then rerun the publish command from history to push updates. For the initial posting, I just had to tab-complete the file path and type out my blog name.)

Edit: I have now also added

CLI to get/set my two Tumblr-specific frontmatter fields,

Emacs code to prompt me interactively to pick from one of my blog names (I use Vertico+Orderless for `fzf`-like narrowing/search in all such prompts).

Emacs function to get the target Tumblr blog from the frontmatter (or prompt if it's not in there) and then call the publish CLI.

Emacs function to call the post deleting CLI.

Code within the above two functions to automatically reload the file from the file system if it had no unsaved changes before the publish/delete (to pick up the frontmatter change made by my Tumblr CLI, since that bypasses Emacs and edits the file itself).

(Naturally these latest edits were made by calling that function from within Emacs.)

For parsing command-line input argument in a script Python has the old argparse, optparse, and getopt modules. A new development is the docopt module that I have been using a bit for scripts related to Responsible Business Base.

The docopt module is a doctest-like approach where the command-line input specification is simply specified in the documentation (i.e., the docstring) of the script, just as you write the ordinary documentation. The simplicity in the approach may best be described by citing a YouTube comment: "holy shit".

Vladimir Keleshev has made his code available at https://github.com/docopt/docopt. It also installable via pip install docopt and http://docopt.org/ shows example.

Here is a small example which uses docopt in a program that fits a polynomium.

doctest와 비슷한 아이디어인데, doctest도 그렇고 암시적인 것보다 명시적인 것을 선호하는 Python 철학에는 별로 좋은 아이디어로 여겨지지 않는 모양. 하여간 발상 자체는 참신한 것 같고, 간단한 스크립트 만들 때는 괜찮지 않을까 싶다.

docopt – pythonic option parser, that will make you smile

You know what's awesome? It's when the option parser is generated based on the help and usage-message that you write in a docstring!

"""

Usage: program.py [options] arguments

Options:

-h --help show this help message and exit

-v --verbose print status messages

-q --quiet report only file names

-r --repeat show all occurrences of the same error

--exclude=patterns exclude files or directories which match these comma separated patterns [default: .svn,CVS,.bzr,.hg,.git]

--filename=patterns when parsing directories, only check filenames matching these comma separated patterns [default: *.py]

--select=errors select errors and warnings (e.g. E,W6)

--ignore=errors skip errors and warnings (e.g. E4,W)

--show-source show source code for each error

"""

from docopt import docopt

def main(options, arguments):

   pass # ...

if __name__ == '__main__':

   # parse options based on docstring above

   options, arguments = docopt(__doc__)