<no title> — Plumbum: Shell Combinators

Basics

>>> from plumbum import local
>>> ls = local["ls"]
>>> ls
LocalCommand(<LocalPath /bin/ls>)
>>> ls()
u'build.py\ndist\ndocs\nLICENSE\nplumbum\nREADME.rst\nsetup.py\ntests\ntodo.txt\n'
>>> notepad = local["c:\\windows\\notepad.exe"]
>>> notepad()                                   # Notepad window pops up
u''                                             # Notepad window is closed by user, command returns

Instead of writing xxx = local["xxx"] for every program you wish to use, you can also import commands:

>>> from plumbum.cmd import grep, wc, cat, head
>>> grep
LocalCommand(<LocalPath /bin/grep>)

Piping

>>> chain = ls["-a"] | grep["-v", "\\.py"] | wc["-l"]
>>> print chain
/bin/ls -a | /bin/grep -v '\.py' | /usr/bin/wc -l
>>> chain()
u'13\n'

Redirection

>>> ((cat < "setup.py") | head["-n", 4])()
u'#!/usr/bin/env python\nimport os\n\ntry:\n'
>>> (ls["-a"] > "file.list")()
u''
>>> (cat["file.list"] | wc["-l"])()
u'17\n'

Working-directory manipulation

>>> local.cwd
<Workdir /home/tomer/workspace/plumbum>
>>> with local.cwd(local.cwd / "docs"):
...     chain()
...
u'15\n'

Foreground and background execution

>>> from plumbum import FG, BG
>>> (ls["-a"] | grep["\\.py"]) & FG         # The output is printed to stdout directly
build.py
.pydevproject
setup.py
>>> (ls["-a"] | grep["\\.py"]) & BG         # The process runs "in the background"
<Future ['/bin/grep', '\\.py'] (running)>

Command nesting

>>> from plumbum.cmd import sudo
>>> print sudo[ifconfig["-a"]]
/usr/bin/sudo /sbin/ifconfig -a
>>> (sudo[ifconfig["-a"]] | grep["-i", "loop"]) & FG
lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1

Remote commands (over SSH)

Supports openSSH-compatible clients, PuTTY (on Windows) and Paramiko (a pure-Python implementation of SSH2)

>>> from plumbum import SshMachine
>>> remote = SshMachine("somehost", user = "john", keyfile = "/path/to/idrsa")
>>> r_ls = remote["ls"]
>>> with remote.cwd("/lib"):
...     (r_ls | grep["0.so.0"])()
...
u'libusb-1.0.so.0\nlibusb-1.0.so.0.0.0\n'

CLI applications

import logging
from plumbum import cli

class MyCompiler(cli.Application):
    verbose = cli.Flag(["-v", "--verbose"], help = "Enable verbose mode")
    include_dirs = cli.SwitchAttr("-I", list = True, help = "Specify include directories")

    @cli.switch("-loglevel", int)
    def set_log_level(self, level):
        """Sets the log-level of the logger"""
        logging.root.setLevel(level)

    def main(self, *srcfiles):
        print "Verbose:", self.verbose
        print "Include dirs:", self.include_dirs
        print "Compiling:", srcfiles


if __name__ == "__main__":
    MyCompiler.run()

Sample output:

$ python simple_cli.py -v -I foo/bar -Ispam/eggs x.cpp y.cpp z.cpp
Verbose: True
Include dirs: ['foo/bar', 'spam/eggs']
Compiling: ('x.cpp', 'y.cpp', 'z.cpp')