Shalchemy

Conveniently call upon binaries from Python as if you were in sh.

from shalchemy import sh, run
from shalchemy.bin import cat, curl, grep

if cat('/etc/hosts') | grep('localhost'):
    run(curl('example.com') > 'file.txt')
    for line in cat('file.txt'):
        print(line)
    run(shalchemy.bin.rm('file.txt'))

Note that none of these are Python functions. We just call the system binaries using subprocess and do an unhealthy amount of magic to tie everything together.

Installation

$> pip install shalchemy

Tutorial

There are only three things you need to care about. shalchemy.sh, shalchemy.run, and shalchemy.bin.

You create expressions by chaining shalchemy.sh instances together.

import shalchemy
ps_aux = shalchemy.sh('ps', 'aux')
grep = shalchemy.sh('grep', 'python')
piped_expression = ps_aux | grep

These expressions on their own don't actively run the underlying system commands. They are evaluated in these three circumstances:

• They are passed to shalchemy.run
• They are converted to a bool, str, or int
• They are iterated over

During the evaluation phase, subprocesses are created, files are opened, and things are piped together with Linux magic. The Python process blocks until everything is finished. Once all the processes are done, things are cleaned up, and the correct data type is provided to the user.

Pipes and Redirects

shalchemy expressions support pipes | and redirects (<, >, >>) for stdout.

Sadly, Python doesn't support overloading the 2> operation for stderr. But because we are crazy, we used >= instead!

from shalchemy import sh
from sqlalchemy.bin import rm
sh.run(((rm('nonexistent_file') > 'log.txt') >= '&1')
sh.run(((rm('nonexistent_file2') >> 'log.txt') >= 'errors.txt')

There are also issues with Python's operator precedence and chaining. That is, 1 < x < 3 expands to 1 < x and x < 3 which is not very sh-friendly.

If you're going to do any sort of complex redirect chaining, it might be best to use the in_, out_ and err_ methods.

from shalchemy import sh
from sqlalchemy.bin import rm
sh.run(rm('nonexistent_file').in_('input.txt').out_('log.txt', append=True).err_('&1'))

Arguments

shalchemy.sh is used to create expressions. Calling it creates an internal CommandExpression. These CommandExpressions hold arguments and curry them. You can also access their attributes to naturally generate curried expressions for subcommands. As a result, these four different python lines will create the same CommandExpression:

from shalchemy import sh
from shalchemy.bin import git
expr1 = sh('git', 'show', '.')
expr2 = sh(['git', 'show', '.'])
expr3 = git('show', '.')
expr4 = git.show('.')
expr5 = sh('git show .')  # Special

There is something special about expr5 that should be noted. If sh (or any CommandExpression) receives a single string as the only argument, it will assume that you wanted to type a sh-compatible string and it'll automatically tokenize it for you using shlex.

In other words, sh('git show .') will create the Command sh(['git', 'show', '.']). If you don't like the automatic tokenization, you can explicitly provide a list with a single string inside like sh(['git show .']). Note that this second version will attempt to search your $PATH for a binary named "git\ show\ ." which is almost always not what anybody wants. Just a small warning for this special automatic tokenization thing that might become a gotcha one day.

shalchemy.bin

The shalchemy.bin module is a magic module that wraps whatever you want to import in shalchemy.sh in a straightforward way. Importing grep from sqlalchemy.bin will just give you the result of sh('grep')

Multiple commands

shalchemy does not currently (and probably never will) support multiple commands chained with && like sh does.

Python IO Redirects

shalchemy supports redirects directly from standard Python io objects. That means this is fully supported:

from io import StringIO
from shalchemy import sh
from shalchemy.bin import cat
sh.run(cat < StringIO('my string'))

Process Substitutions

Process substitution is a technique to make the output of a command look like a file to the receiving process. One very common use of this is when using the diff command. Suppose you wanted to diff the file you have on disk with something on the internet. Normally, you would do:

curl example.com/file.txt > tempfile.txt
diff file.txt tempfile.txt
rm tempfile.txt

But actually you can do:

diff file.txt <(curl example.com/file.txt)

The <(command) syntax makes sh create a temporary file in /dev/fd/xxxx. This is called Process Substitution.

The way you do the same with shalchemy is:

diff('file.txt', curl('example.com/file.txt').read_sub())

Once an expression's read_sub method is called, the result is a ProcessSubstituteExpression which can no longer be composed with other expressions. It can only be used as an argument directly to other commands.

from io import StringIO
from shalchemy import sh
from shalchemy.bin import cat
sh.run(cat < StringIO('my string'))

There is also a write_sub equivalent to sh's >(expr).

sh.run(
    cat('/usr/share/dict/words') |
    bin.tee(
        (cat > './words1.txt').write_sub(),
        (cat > './words2.txt').write_sub(),
    ) > '/dev/null'
)