py-sh

A binary for during your shell grunt work in python

Overview

Here's the value of py-sh, compared with bash and plain python

baseName="kai"

# with bash / coreutils
baseName="$(tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]' <<< ${baseName:0:1})${baseName:1}"
adminProfileSuffix="AdminRole"
adminProfile="$baseName$adminProfileSuffix"
echo $adminProfile # outputs "KaiAdminRole"

# with python
adminProfile=$(python -c "print('$baseName'.capitalize() + 'AdminRole')")
echo $adminProfile # outputs "KaiAdminRole"

# with py-sh
adminProfile=$(echo $baseName | py-sh 'input.capitalize() + str(AdminRole)')
echo $adminProfile # outputs "KaiAdminRole"

Status

py-sh version 1.0 is...

1%

...implemented.

Background

I do a lot of lightweight work with bash + coreutils, and doing that work requires looking up at least one stackoverflow question essentially 100% of the time. This is more or less caused by bash + coreutils having very esoteric syntax, and not directly catering to the specific needs of engineers working on cli. So you end up having to do things like this

baseName="kai"
baseName="$(tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]' <<< ${baseName:0:1})${baseName:1}"
adminProfileSuffix="AdminRole"
adminProfile="$baseName$adminProfileSuffix"
echo $adminProfile # outputs "KaiAdminRole"

That took me two stackoverflow searches to create, and uses a lot of syntax and assumptions that are hard to explain to new engineers.

At the same time, I already know python. I know offhand that in python, the equivalent functionality could be written on the terminal as

baseName="kai"
adminProfile=$(python -c "print('$baseName'.capitalize() + 'AdminRole')")
echo $adminProfile # outputs "KaiAdminRole"

I could create this with knowledge I had on hand! This is a nice boost to my iteration pace, is more readable for my future self, and uses syntax that you're very likely to see when doing other work in python.

It has a few significant flaws, though. In order of increasing importance:

There's still quote a bit of "shell invocation boilerplate", in the ', ", -c. This is tedious most of the time, but quotes can cause issues with more complex input types.
The advantage that python has over bash wanes when you start working with more complex input types, like files.
Its excuting a string ($baseName) as arbitrary python code, which is a very easy way to cause a lot of security vulnerabilites.

That sucks. But wait... those are all engineering problems, and maybe all problems that can be solved???

The Goal

Spoiler: yes we can solve all those problems! We can create something that:

Assumes its primary operating mode will be in a shell
Includes builtin handling for files, including files of various data types
Strictly handles its input types

I'm calling that thing py-sh, and I want it to work like this

baseName="kai"
adminProfile=$(echo $baseName | py-sh 'input.capitalize() + str(AdminRole)')
echo $adminProfile # outputs "KaiAdminRole"

Prior Art

The overarching goal of py-sh is very similar to xonsh, and ipython shell. All 3 (py-sh, xonsh, ipython shell) aim to give users to ability to do "shell work" using python. The contrast significantly in their conceptual API though, py-sh is meant to be executed inside your existing shell (eg bash, zsh, etc) - and xonsh / ipython shell want to replace your shell.

Finding out about xonsh is what originally inspired to author to start exploring this concept 🗺
Adding support for ipython's concept of magic commands is currently under consideration 📝

The API of py-sh is functionally identical to rb. The primary difference is in the implementation details, in that py-sh aims to ship itself as a binary that also contains a statically linked binary of its underlying language (eg. python).

The idea to require api input be piped into py-sh was inspired by rb ✨

coilysiren/py-sh

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