All patches and comments are welcome. Please squash your changes to logical
commits before using git-format-patch and git-send-email to
patches@git.madduck.net.
If you'd read over the Git project's submission guidelines and adhered to them,
I'd be especially grateful.
1 # The _Black_ code style
5 _Black_ aims for consistency, generality, readability and reducing git diffs. Similar
6 language constructs are formatted with similar rules. Style configuration options are
7 deliberately limited and rarely added. Previous formatting is taken into account as
8 little as possible, with rare exceptions like the magic trailing comma. The coding style
9 used by _Black_ can be viewed as a strict subset of PEP 8.
11 _Black_ reformats entire files in place. It doesn't reformat lines that end with
12 `# fmt: skip` or blocks that start with `# fmt: off` and end with `# fmt: on`.
13 `# fmt: on/off` must be on the same level of indentation and in the same block, meaning
14 no unindents beyond the initial indentation level between them. It also recognizes
15 [YAPF](https://github.com/google/yapf)'s block comments to the same effect, as a
16 courtesy for straddling code.
18 The rest of this document describes the current formatting style. If you're interested
19 in trying out where the style is heading, see [future style](./future_style.md) and try
20 running `black --preview`.
22 ### How _Black_ wraps lines
24 _Black_ ignores previous formatting and applies uniform horizontal and vertical
25 whitespace to your code. The rules for horizontal whitespace can be summarized as: do
26 whatever makes `pycodestyle` happy.
28 As for vertical whitespace, _Black_ tries to render one full expression or simple
29 statement per line. If this fits the allotted line length, great.
44 If not, _Black_ will look at the contents of the first outer matching brackets and put
45 that in a separate indented line.
50 ImportantClass.important_method(exc, limit, lookup_lines, capture_locals, extra_argument)
54 ImportantClass.important_method(
55 exc, limit, lookup_lines, capture_locals, extra_argument
59 If that still doesn't fit the bill, it will decompose the internal expression further
60 using the same rule, indenting matching brackets every time. If the contents of the
61 matching brackets pair are comma-separated (like an argument list, or a dict literal,
62 and so on) then _Black_ will first try to keep them on the same line with the matching
63 brackets. If that doesn't work, it will put all of them in separate lines.
68 def very_important_function(template: str, *variables, file: os.PathLike, engine: str, header: bool = True, debug: bool = False):
69 """Applies `variables` to the `template` and writes to `file`."""
70 with open(file, 'w') as f:
75 def very_important_function(
83 """Applies `variables` to the `template` and writes to `file`."""
84 with open(file, "w") as f:
88 If a data structure literal (tuple, list, set, dict) or a line of "from" imports cannot
89 fit in the allotted length, it's always split into one element per line. This minimizes
90 diffs as well as enables readers of code to find which commit introduced a particular
91 entry. This also makes _Black_ compatible with
92 [isort](../guides/using_black_with_other_tools.md#isort) with the ready-made `black`
93 profile or manual configuration.
95 You might have noticed that closing brackets are always dedented and that a trailing
96 comma is always added. Such formatting produces smaller diffs; when you add or remove an
97 element, it's always just one line. Also, having the closing bracket dedented provides a
98 clear delimiter between two distinct sections of the code that otherwise share the same
99 indentation level (like the arguments list and the docstring in the example above).
101 (labels/why-no-backslashes)=
103 _Black_ prefers parentheses over backslashes, and will remove backslashes if found.
108 if some_short_rule1 \
109 and some_short_rule2:
114 if some_short_rule1 and some_short_rule2:
134 Backslashes and multiline strings are one of the two places in the Python grammar that
135 break significant indentation. You never need backslashes, they are used to force the
136 grammar to accept breaks that would otherwise be parse errors. That makes them confusing
137 to look at and brittle to modify. This is why _Black_ always gets rid of them.
139 If you're reaching for backslashes, that's a clear signal that you can do better if you
140 slightly refactor your code. I hope some of the examples above show you that there are
141 many ways in which you can do it.
143 (labels/line-length)=
147 You probably noticed the peculiar default line length. _Black_ defaults to 88 characters
148 per line, which happens to be 10% over 80. This number was found to produce
149 significantly shorter files than sticking with 80 (the most popular), or even 79 (used
150 by the standard library). In general,
151 [90-ish seems like the wise choice](https://youtu.be/wf-BqAjZb8M?t=260).
153 If you're paid by the line of code you write, you can pass `--line-length` with a lower
154 number. _Black_ will try to respect that. However, sometimes it won't be able to without
155 breaking other rules. In those rare cases, auto-formatted code will exceed your allotted
158 You can also increase it, but remember that people with sight disabilities find it
159 harder to work with line lengths exceeding 100 characters. It also adversely affects
160 side-by-side diff review on typical screen resolutions. Long lines also make it harder
161 to present code neatly in documentation or talk slides.
163 If you're using Flake8, you can bump `max-line-length` to 88 and mostly forget about it.
164 However, it's better if you use [Bugbear](https://github.com/PyCQA/flake8-bugbear)'s
165 B950 warning instead of E501, and bump the max line length to 88 (or the `--line-length`
166 you used for black), which will align more with black's _"try to respect
167 `--line-length`, but don't become crazy if you can't"_. You'd do it like this:
173 select = C,E,F,W,B,B950
174 extend-ignore = E203, E501
177 Explanation of why E203 is disabled can be found further in this documentation. And if
178 you're curious about the reasoning behind B950,
179 [Bugbear's documentation](https://github.com/PyCQA/flake8-bugbear#opinionated-warnings)
180 explains it. The tl;dr is "it's like highway speed limits, we won't bother you if you
181 overdo it by a few km/h".
183 **If you're looking for a minimal, black-compatible flake8 configuration:**
193 _Black_ avoids spurious vertical whitespace. This is in the spirit of PEP 8 which says
194 that in-function vertical whitespace should only be used sparingly.
196 _Black_ will allow single empty lines inside functions, and single and double empty
197 lines on module level left by the original editors, except when they're within
198 parenthesized expressions. Since such expressions are always reformatted to fit minimal
199 space, this whitespace is lost. The other exception is that it will remove any empty
200 lines immediately following a statement that introduces a new indentation level.
207 print("All the newlines above me should be deleted!")
212 print("No newline above me!")
214 print("There is a newline above me, and that's OK!")
225 print("All the newlines above me should be deleted!")
229 print("No newline above me!")
231 print("There is a newline above me, and that's OK!")
239 It will also insert proper spacing before and after function definitions. It's one line
240 before and after inner functions and two lines before and after module-level functions
241 and classes. _Black_ will not put empty lines between function/class definitions and
242 standalone comments that immediately precede the given function/class.
244 _Black_ will enforce single empty lines between a class-level docstring and the first
245 following field or method. This conforms to
246 [PEP 257](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/#multi-line-docstrings).
248 _Black_ won't insert empty lines after function docstrings unless that empty line is
249 required due to an inner function starting immediately after.
253 _Black_ does not format comment contents, but it enforces two spaces between code and a
254 comment on the same line, and a space before the comment text begins. Some types of
255 comments that require specific spacing rules are respected: doc comments (`#: comment`),
256 section comments with long runs of hashes, and Spyder cells. Non-breaking spaces after
257 hashes are also preserved. Comments may sometimes be moved because of formatting
258 changes, which can break tools that assign special meaning to them. See
259 [AST before and after formatting](#ast-before-and-after-formatting) for more discussion.
263 _Black_ will add trailing commas to expressions that are split by comma where each
264 element is on its own line. This includes function signatures.
266 One exception to adding trailing commas is function signatures containing `*`, `*args`,
267 or `**kwargs`. In this case a trailing comma is only safe to use on Python 3.6. _Black_
268 will detect if your file is already 3.6+ only and use trailing commas in this situation.
269 If you wonder how it knows, it looks for f-strings and existing use of trailing commas
270 in function signatures that have stars in them. In other words, if you'd like a trailing
271 comma in this situation and _Black_ didn't recognize it was safe to do so, put it there
272 manually and _Black_ will keep it.
274 A pre-existing trailing comma informs _Black_ to always explode contents of the current
275 bracket pair into one item per line. Read more about this in the
276 [Pragmatism](#pragmatism) section below.
282 _Black_ prefers double quotes (`"` and `"""`) over single quotes (`'` and `'''`). It
283 will replace the latter with the former as long as it does not result in more backslash
286 _Black_ also standardizes string prefixes. Prefix characters are made lowercase with the
287 exception of [capital "R" prefixes](#rstrings-and-rstrings), unicode literal markers
288 (`u`) are removed because they are meaningless in Python 3, and in the case of multiple
289 characters "r" is put first as in spoken language: "raw f-string".
291 The main reason to standardize on a single form of quotes is aesthetics. Having one kind
292 of quotes everywhere reduces reader distraction. It will also enable a future version of
293 _Black_ to merge consecutive string literals that ended up on the same line (see
294 [#26](https://github.com/psf/black/issues/26) for details).
296 Why settle on double quotes? They anticipate apostrophes in English text. They match the
297 docstring standard described in
298 [PEP 257](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/#what-is-a-docstring). An empty
299 string in double quotes (`""`) is impossible to confuse with a one double-quote
300 regardless of fonts and syntax highlighting used. On top of this, double quotes for
301 strings are consistent with C which Python interacts a lot with.
303 On certain keyboard layouts like US English, typing single quotes is a bit easier than
304 double quotes. The latter requires use of the Shift key. My recommendation here is to
305 keep using whatever is faster to type and let _Black_ handle the transformation.
307 If you are adopting _Black_ in a large project with pre-existing string conventions
309 ["single quotes for data, double quotes for human-readable strings"](https://stackoverflow.com/a/56190)),
310 you can pass `--skip-string-normalization` on the command line. This is meant as an
311 adoption helper, avoid using this for new projects.
313 _Black_ also processes docstrings. Firstly the indentation of docstrings is corrected
314 for both quotations and the text within, although relative indentation in the text is
315 preserved. Superfluous trailing whitespace on each line and unnecessary new lines at the
316 end of the docstring are removed. All leading tabs are converted to spaces, but tabs
317 inside text are preserved. Whitespace leading and trailing one-line docstrings is
322 _Black_ standardizes most numeric literals to use lowercase letters for the syntactic
323 parts and uppercase letters for the digits themselves: `0xAB` instead of `0XAB` and
324 `1e10` instead of `1E10`.
326 ### Line breaks & binary operators
328 _Black_ will break a line before a binary operator when splitting a block of code over
329 multiple lines. This is so that _Black_ is compliant with the recent changes in the
330 [PEP 8](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/#should-a-line-break-before-or-after-a-binary-operator)
331 style guide, which emphasizes that this approach improves readability.
333 Almost all operators will be surrounded by single spaces, the only exceptions are unary
334 operators (`+`, `-`, and `~`), and power operators when both operands are simple. For
335 powers, an operand is considered simple if it's only a NAME, numeric CONSTANT, or
336 attribute access (chained attribute access is allowed), with or without a preceding
340 # For example, these won't be surrounded by whitespace
343 c = config.base**runtime.config.exponent
347 # ... but these will be surrounded by whitespace
348 f = 2 ** get_exponent()
349 g = get_x() ** get_y()
350 h = config['base'] ** 2
356 [recommends](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/#whitespace-in-expressions-and-statements)
357 to treat `:` in slices as a binary operator with the lowest priority, and to leave an
358 equal amount of space on either side, except if a parameter is omitted (e.g.
359 `ham[1 + 1 :]`). It recommends no spaces around `:` operators for "simple expressions"
360 (`ham[lower:upper]`), and extra space for "complex expressions"
361 (`ham[lower : upper + offset]`). _Black_ treats anything more than variable names as
362 "complex" (`ham[lower : upper + 1]`). It also states that for extended slices, both `:`
363 operators have to have the same amount of spacing, except if a parameter is omitted
364 (`ham[1 + 1 ::]`). _Black_ enforces these rules consistently.
366 This behaviour may raise `E203 whitespace before ':'` warnings in style guide
367 enforcement tools like Flake8. Since `E203` is not PEP 8 compliant, you should tell
368 Flake8 to ignore these warnings.
372 Some parentheses are optional in the Python grammar. Any expression can be wrapped in a
373 pair of parentheses to form an atom. There are a few interesting cases:
377 - `for (...) in (...):`
378 - `assert (...), (...)`
379 - `from X import (...)`
382 - `target: type = (...)`
383 - `some, *un, packing = (...)`
384 - `augmented += (...)`
386 In those cases, parentheses are removed when the entire statement fits in one line, or
387 if the inner expression doesn't have any delimiters to further split on. If there is
388 only a single delimiter and the expression starts or ends with a bracket, the
389 parentheses can also be successfully omitted since the existing bracket pair will
390 organize the expression neatly anyway. Otherwise, the parentheses are added.
392 Please note that _Black_ does not add or remove any additional nested parentheses that
393 you might want to have for clarity or further code organization. For example those
394 parentheses are not going to be removed:
397 return not (this or that)
398 decision = (maybe.this() and values > 0) or (maybe.that() and values < 0)
403 Some popular APIs, like ORMs, use call chaining. This API style is known as a
404 [fluent interface](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluent_interface). _Black_ formats
405 those by treating dots that follow a call or an indexing operation like a very low
406 priority delimiter. It's easier to show the behavior than to explain it. Look at the
410 def example(session):
412 session.query(models.Customer.id)
414 models.Customer.account_id == account_id,
415 models.Customer.email == email_address,
417 .order_by(models.Customer.id.asc())
422 ### Typing stub files
424 PEP 484 describes the syntax for type hints in Python. One of the use cases for typing
425 is providing type annotations for modules which cannot contain them directly (they might
426 be written in C, or they might be third-party, or their implementation may be overly
430 [stub files with the `.pyi` file extension](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0484/#stub-files)
431 can be used to describe typing information for an external module. Those stub files omit
432 the implementation of classes and functions they describe, instead they only contain the
433 structure of the file (listing globals, functions, and classes with their members). The
434 recommended code style for those files is more terse than PEP 8:
436 - prefer `...` on the same line as the class/function signature;
437 - avoid vertical whitespace between consecutive module-level functions, names, or
438 methods and fields within a single class;
439 - use a single blank line between top-level class definitions, or none if the classes
442 _Black_ enforces the above rules. There are additional guidelines for formatting `.pyi`
443 file that are not enforced yet but might be in a future version of the formatter:
445 - prefer `...` over `pass`;
446 - avoid using string literals in type annotations, stub files support forward references
447 natively (like Python 3.7 code with `from __future__ import annotations`);
448 - use variable annotations instead of type comments, even for stubs that target older
453 _Black_ will normalize line endings (`\n` or `\r\n`) based on the first line ending of
458 Early versions of _Black_ used to be absolutist in some respects. They took after its
459 initial author. This was fine at the time as it made the implementation simpler and
460 there were not many users anyway. Not many edge cases were reported. As a mature tool,
461 _Black_ does make some exceptions to rules it otherwise holds. This section documents
462 what those exceptions are and why this is the case.
464 (labels/magic-trailing-comma)=
466 ### The magic trailing comma
468 _Black_ in general does not take existing formatting into account.
470 However, there are cases where you put a short collection or function call in your code
471 but you anticipate it will grow in the future.
477 "en_us": "English (US)",
482 Early versions of _Black_ used to ruthlessly collapse those into one line (it fits!).
483 Now, you can communicate that you don't want that by putting a trailing comma in the
484 collection yourself. When you do, _Black_ will know to always explode your collection
485 into one item per line.
487 How do you make it stop? Just delete that trailing comma and _Black_ will collapse your
488 collection into one line if it fits.
490 If you must, you can recover the behaviour of early versions of _Black_ with the option
491 `--skip-magic-trailing-comma` / `-C`.
493 ### r"strings" and R"strings"
495 _Black_ normalizes string quotes as well as string prefixes, making them lowercase. One
496 exception to this rule is r-strings. It turns out that the very popular
497 [MagicPython](https://github.com/MagicStack/MagicPython/) syntax highlighter, used by
498 default by (among others) GitHub and Visual Studio Code, differentiates between
499 r-strings and R-strings. The former are syntax highlighted as regular expressions while
500 the latter are treated as true raw strings with no special semantics.
502 (labels/ast-changes)=
504 ### AST before and after formatting
506 When run with `--safe` (the default), _Black_ checks that the code before and after is
507 semantically equivalent. This check is done by comparing the AST of the source with the
508 AST of the target. There are three limited cases in which the AST does differ:
510 1. _Black_ cleans up leading and trailing whitespace of docstrings, re-indenting them if
511 needed. It's been one of the most popular user-reported features for the formatter to
512 fix whitespace issues with docstrings. While the result is technically an AST
513 difference, due to the various possibilities of forming docstrings, all real-world
514 uses of docstrings that we're aware of sanitize indentation and leading/trailing
517 1. _Black_ manages optional parentheses for some statements. In the case of the `del`
518 statement, presence of wrapping parentheses or lack of thereof changes the resulting
519 AST but is semantically equivalent in the interpreter.
521 1. _Black_ might move comments around, which includes type comments. Those are part of
522 the AST as of Python 3.8. While the tool implements a number of special cases for
523 those comments, there is no guarantee they will remain where they were in the source.
524 Note that this doesn't change runtime behavior of the source code.
526 To put things in perspective, the code equivalence check is a feature of _Black_ which
527 other formatters don't implement at all. It is of crucial importance to us to ensure
528 code behaves the way it did before it got reformatted. We treat this as a feature and
529 there are no plans to relax this in the future. The exceptions enumerated above stem
530 from either user feedback or implementation details of the tool. In each case we made
531 due diligence to ensure that the AST divergence is of no practical consequence.