Command Line Tools

Some basic command line tools, mostly in Python 3, which automate tasks I frequently find myself performing. This includes downloading audio from YouTube, editing and merging PDFs, and more. As the need arises, I will certainly expand this collection.

Overview

Scripts range from highly specific in utility (such as distribute.py) to fairly broad (such as pdftools.py). Certain script functionality is little but a wrapper for a pre-existing command line utility like qpdf or sox; in such cases, the script is designed to simplify the syntax and make the use of these tools more convenient and intuitive for whatever highly-specific application I require.

Description of Scripts

• distribute.py - made for Toyota Yarris sound-system; arranges mp3 files alphabetically into directories of 255 each, and compares the files with those in ~/Music
• download-music.py - downloads mp3 audio from a list of YouTube (or other) URLs, removing leading and trailing silence
• ergo.py - made to assist with card game, Ergo; outputs a list of atomic proposition which are (dis)proven by a given list of premises (propositional logic sentences)
• shortcut.py - creates cross-platform, browser independent internet shortcut for a URL, based on a .html file, with options to retrieve URL from clipboard, and to use (sanitised) webpage title for shortcut name
• pdftools.py - extract, interleave or rotate pages of PDFs, or find and replace text in a PDF
• pwned.py - query HaveIBeenPwned API to check whether a given password has been leaked in a data breach

Running the Scripts

Each script begins with an appropriate shebang, allowing it to be executed directly, for instance with ./scriptname.py in place of python3 scriptname.py.

For maximum convenience, it is recommended to place the desired scripts in a folder linked by the $PATH environment variable. That is, if the scripts are in ~/scripts, then the following line may be added to the shell's RC file, to allow scripts to be executed by name from a terminal open in any directory:

export PATH=$PATH:~/scripts

Documentation

Each script in general takes positional command line arguments, as well as optional arguments and flags. Argument parsing is done in Python using the argparse module, and all arguments are thoroughly documented. To view detailed help, simply execute a script with the -h or --help flag.

Prerequisites

• download-music.py requires command line tools SoX and youtube-dl
• pdftools.py requires command line tool QPDF

Known Issues

• distribute.py is not very robust. Manually rearranging the files in each of the generated folders can break the alphabetical ordering.

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome - in fact, encouraged.