Plumbum: Shell Combinators

Ever wished the compactness of shell scripts be put into a real programming language? Say hello to Plumbum Shell Combinators. Plumbum (Latin for lead, which was used to create pipes back in the day) is a small yet feature-rich library for shell script-like programs in Python. The motto of the library is "Never write shell scripts again", and thus it attempts to mimic the shell syntax ("shell combinators") where it makes sense, while keeping it all Pythonic and cross-platform.

Apart from shell-like syntax and handy shortcuts, the library provides local and remote command execution (over SSH), local and remote file-system paths, easy working-directory and environment manipulation, and a programmatic Command-Line Interface (CLI) application toolkit. Now let's see some code!

This is only a teaser; the full documentation can be found at Read the Docs

Cheat Sheet

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')

unhandled-exception/plumbum

Plumbum: Shell Combinators

Cheat Sheet