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 ![Black Logo](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ambv/black/master/docs/_static/logo2-readme.png)
2 <h2 align="center">The Uncompromising Code Formatter</h2>
5 <a href="https://travis-ci.org/ambv/black"><img alt="Build Status" src="https://travis-ci.org/ambv/black.svg?branch=master"></a>
6 <a href="http://black.readthedocs.io/en/latest/?badge=latest"><img alt="Documentation Status" src="http://readthedocs.org/projects/black/badge/?version=latest"></a>
7 <a href="https://coveralls.io/github/ambv/black?branch=master"><img alt="Coverage Status" src="https://coveralls.io/repos/github/ambv/black/badge.svg?branch=master"></a>
8 <a href="https://github.com/ambv/black/blob/master/LICENSE"><img alt="License: MIT" src="http://black.readthedocs.io/en/latest/_static/license.svg"></a>
9 <a href="https://pypi.python.org/pypi/black"><img alt="PyPI" src="http://black.readthedocs.io/en/latest/_static/pypi.svg"></a>
10 <a href="https://github.com/ambv/black"><img alt="Code style: black" src="https://img.shields.io/badge/code%20style-black-000000.svg"></a>
13 > “Any color you like.”
16 *Black* is the uncompromising Python code formatter. By using it, you
17 agree to cease control over minutiae of hand-formatting. In return,
18 *Black* gives you speed, determinism, and freedom from `pycodestyle`
19 nagging about formatting. You will save time and mental energy for
20 more important matters.
22 Blackened code looks the same regardless of the project you're reading.
23 Formatting becomes transparent after a while and you can focus on the
26 *Black* makes code review faster by producing the smallest diffs
30 ## NOTE: This is an early pre-release
32 *Black* can already successfully format itself and the standard library.
33 It also sports a decent test suite. However, it is still very new.
34 Things will probably be wonky for a while. This is made explicit by the
35 "Alpha" trove classifier, as well as by the "a" in the version number.
36 What this means for you is that **until the formatter becomes stable,
37 you should expect some formatting to change in the future**.
39 Also, as a temporary safety measure, *Black* will check that the
40 reformatted code still produces a valid AST that is equivalent to the
41 original. This slows it down. If you're feeling confident, use
47 *Black* can be installed by running `pip install black`. It requires
48 Python 3.6.0+ to run but you can reformat Python 2 code with it, too.
49 *Black* is able to parse all of the new syntax supported on Python 3.6
50 but also *effectively all* the Python 2 syntax at the same time.
57 black [OPTIONS] [SRC]...
60 -l, --line-length INTEGER Where to wrap around. [default: 88]
61 --check Don't write back the files, just return the
62 status. Return code 0 means nothing would
63 change. Return code 1 means some files would be
64 reformatted. Return code 123 means there was an
66 --fast / --safe If --fast given, skip temporary sanity checks.
68 --version Show the version and exit.
69 --help Show this message and exit.
72 *Black* is a well-behaved Unix-style command-line tool:
73 * it does nothing if no sources are passed to it;
74 * it will read from standard input and write to standard output if `-`
75 is used as the filename;
76 * it only outputs messages to users on standard error;
77 * exits with code 0 unless an internal error occured (or `--check` was
81 ## The philosophy behind *Black*
83 *Black* reformats entire files in place. It is not configurable. It
84 doesn't take previous formatting into account. It doesn't reformat
85 blocks that start with `# fmt: off` and end with `# fmt: on`. It also
86 recognizes [YAPF](https://github.com/google/yapf)'s block comments to
87 the same effect, as a courtesy for straddling code.
90 ### How *Black* formats files
92 *Black* ignores previous formatting and applies uniform horizontal
93 and vertical whitespace to your code. The rules for horizontal
94 whitespace are pretty obvious and can be summarized as: do whatever
95 makes `pycodestyle` happy.
97 As for vertical whitespace, *Black* tries to render one full expression
98 or simple statement per line. If this fits the allotted line length,
113 If not, *Black* will look at the contents of the first outer matching
114 brackets and put that in a separate indented line.
118 l = [[n for n in list_bosses()], [n for n in list_employees()]]
123 [n for n in list_bosses()], [n for n in list_employees()]
127 If that still doesn't fit the bill, it will decompose the internal
128 expression further using the same rule, indenting matching brackets
129 every time. If the contents of the matching brackets pair are
130 comma-separated (like an argument list, or a dict literal, and so on)
131 then *Black* will first try to keep them on the same line with the
132 matching brackets. If that doesn't work, it will put all of them in
137 def very_important_function(template: str, *variables, file: os.PathLike, debug: bool = False):
138 """Applies `variables` to the `template` and writes to `file`."""
139 with open(file, 'w') as f:
144 def very_important_function(
150 """Applies `variables` to the `template` and writes to `file`."""
151 with open(file, 'w') as f:
155 You might have noticed that closing brackets are always dedented and
156 that a trailing comma is always added. Such formatting produces smaller
157 diffs; when you add or remove an element, it's always just one line.
158 Also, having the closing bracket dedented provides a clear delimiter
159 between two distinct sections of the code that otherwise share the same
160 indentation level (like the arguments list and the docstring in the
163 Unnecessary trailing commas are removed if an expression fits in one
164 line. This makes it 1% more likely that your line won't exceed the
165 allotted line length limit.
167 *Black* avoids spurious vertical whitespace. This is in the spirit of
168 PEP 8 which says that in-function vertical whitespace should only be
169 used sparingly. One exception is control flow statements: *Black* will
170 always emit an extra empty line after ``return``, ``raise``, ``break``,
171 ``continue``, and ``yield``. This is to make changes in control flow
172 more prominent to readers of your code.
174 That's it. The rest of the whitespace formatting rules follow PEP 8 and
175 are designed to keep `pycodestyle` quiet.
180 You probably noticed the peculiar default line length. *Black* defaults
181 to 88 characters per line, which happens to be 10% over 80. This number
182 was found to produce significantly shorter files than sticking with 80
183 (the most popular), or even 79 (used by the standard library). In
184 general, [90-ish seems like the wise choice](https://youtu.be/wf-BqAjZb8M?t=260).
186 If you're paid by the line of code you write, you can pass
187 `--line-length` with a lower number. *Black* will try to respect that.
188 However, sometimes it won't be able to without breaking other rules. In
189 those rare cases, auto-formatted code will exceed your allotted limit.
191 You can also increase it, but remember that people with sight disabilities
192 find it harder to work with line lengths exceeding 100 characters.
193 It also adversely affects side-by-side diff review on typical screen
194 resolutions. Long lines also make it harder to present code neatly
195 in documentation or talk slides.
197 If you're using Flake8, you can bump `max-line-length` to 88 and forget
198 about it. Alternatively, use [Bugbear](https://github.com/PyCQA/flake8-bugbear)'s
199 B950 warning instead of E501 and keep the max line length at 80 which
200 you are probably already using. You'd do it like this:
205 select = C,E,F,W,B,B950
209 You'll find *Black*'s own .flake8 config file is configured like this.
210 If you're curious about the reasoning behind B950, Bugbear's documentation
211 explains it. The tl;dr is "it's like highway speed limits, we won't
212 bother you if you overdo it by a few km/h".
217 *Black* will allow single empty lines left by the original editors,
218 except when they're added within parenthesized expressions. Since such
219 expressions are always reformatted to fit minimal space, this whitespace
222 It will also insert proper spacing before and after function definitions.
223 It's one line before and after inner functions and two lines before and
224 after module-level functions. *Black* will put those empty lines also
225 between the function definition and any standalone comments that
226 immediately precede the given function. If you want to comment on the
227 entire function, use a docstring or put a leading comment in the function
231 ### Editor integration
233 * Visual Studio Code: [joslarson.black-vscode](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=joslarson.black-vscode)
234 * Emacs: [proofit404/blacken](https://github.com/proofit404/blacken)
236 Any tool that can pipe code through *Black* using its stdio mode (just
237 [use `-` as the file name](http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/special-chars.html#DASHREF2)).
238 The formatted code will be returned on stdout (unless `--check` was
239 passed). *Black* will still emit messages on stderr but that shouldn't
240 affect your use case.
242 Vim and Atom/Nuclide integration is planned by the author, others will
243 require external contributions.
245 Patches welcome! ✨ 🍰 ✨
250 **Dusty Phillips**, [writer](https://smile.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=dusty+phillips):
252 > Black is opinionated so you don't have to be.
254 **Hynek Schlawack**, [creator of `attrs`](http://www.attrs.org/), core
255 developer of Twisted and CPython:
257 > An auto-formatter that doesn't suck is all I want for Xmas!
259 **Carl Meyer**, [Django](https://www.djangoproject.com/) core developer:
261 > At least the name is good.
263 **Kenneth Reitz**, creator of [`requests`](http://python-requests.org/)
264 and [`pipenv`](https://docs.pipenv.org/):
266 > This vastly improves the formatting of our code. Thanks a ton!
271 Use the badge in your project's README.md:
274 [![Code style: black](https://img.shields.io/badge/code%20style-black-000000.svg)](https://github.com/ambv/black)
277 Looks like this: [![Code style: black](https://img.shields.io/badge/code%20style-black-000000.svg)](https://github.com/ambv/black)
287 In terms of inspiration, *Black* is about as configurable as *gofmt* and
288 *rustfmt* are. This is deliberate.
290 Bug reports and fixes are always welcome! However, before you suggest a
291 new feature or configuration knob, ask yourself why you want it. If it
292 enables better integration with some workflow, fixes an inconsistency,
293 speeds things up, and so on - go for it! On the other hand, if your
294 answer is "because I don't like a particular formatting" then you're not
295 ready to embrace *Black* yet. Such changes are unlikely to get accepted.
296 You can still try but prepare to be disappointed.
298 More details can be found in [CONTRIBUTING](CONTRIBUTING.md).
305 * `# fmt: off` and `# fmt: on` are implemented (#5)
307 * automatic detection of deprecated Python 2 forms of print statements
308 and exec statements in the formatted file (#49)
310 * use proper spaces for complex expressions in default values of typed
311 function arguments (#60)
313 * only return exit code 1 when --check is used (#50)
315 * don't remove single trailing commas from square bracket indexing
318 * don't omit whitespace if the previous factor leaf wasn't a math
321 * omit extra space in kwarg unpacking if it's the first argument (#46)
323 * omit extra space in [Sphinx auto-attribute comments](http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/ext/autodoc.html#directive-autoattribute)
329 * don't remove single empty lines outside of bracketed expressions
332 * added ability to pipe formatting from stdin to stdin (#25)
334 * restored ability to format code with legacy usage of `async` as
337 * even better handling of numpy-style array indexing (#33, again)
342 * changed positioning of binary operators to occur at beginning of lines
343 instead of at the end, following [a recent change to PEP8](https://github.com/python/peps/commit/c59c4376ad233a62ca4b3a6060c81368bd21e85b)
346 * ignore empty bracket pairs while splitting. This avoids very weirdly
347 looking formattings (#34, #35)
349 * remove a trailing comma if there is a single argument to a call
351 * if top level functions were separated by a comment, don't put four
352 empty lines after the upper function
354 * fixed unstable formatting of newlines with imports
356 * fixed unintentional folding of post scriptum standalone comments
357 into last statement if it was a simple statement (#18, #28)
359 * fixed missing space in numpy-style array indexing (#33)
361 * fixed spurious space after star-based unary expressions (#31)
368 * only put trailing commas in function signatures and calls if it's
369 safe to do so. If the file is Python 3.6+ it's always safe, otherwise
370 only safe if there are no `*args` or `**kwargs` used in the signature
373 * fixed invalid spacing of dots in relative imports (#6, #13)
375 * fixed invalid splitting after comma on unpacked variables in for-loops
378 * fixed spurious space in parenthesized set expressions (#7)
380 * fixed spurious space after opening parentheses and in default
383 * fixed spurious space after unary operators when the operand was
384 a complex expression (#15)
389 * first published version, Happy 🍰 Day 2018!
393 * date-versioned (see: https://calver.org/)
398 Glued together by [Łukasz Langa](mailto:lukasz@langa.pl).