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 ## Installation and Usage
34 *Black* can be installed by running `pip install black`. It requires
35 Python 3.6.0+ to run but you can reformat Python 2 code with it, too.
40 To get started right away with sensible defaults:
43 black {source_file_or_directory}
46 ### Command line options
48 Black doesn't provide many options. You can list them by running
52 black [OPTIONS] [SRC]...
55 -l, --line-length INTEGER Where to wrap around. [default: 88]
56 --check Don't write the files back, just return the
57 status. Return code 0 means nothing would
58 change. Return code 1 means some files would be
59 reformatted. Return code 123 means there was an
61 --diff Don't write the files back, just output a diff
62 for each file on stdout.
63 --fast / --safe If --fast given, skip temporary sanity checks.
65 --version Show the version and exit.
66 --help Show this message and exit.
69 *Black* is a well-behaved Unix-style command-line tool:
70 * it does nothing if no sources are passed to it;
71 * it will read from standard input and write to standard output if `-`
72 is used as the filename;
73 * it only outputs messages to users on standard error;
74 * exits with code 0 unless an internal error occured (or `--check` was
78 ### NOTE: This is an early pre-release
80 *Black* can already successfully format itself and the standard library.
81 It also sports a decent test suite. However, it is still very new.
82 Things will probably be wonky for a while. This is made explicit by the
83 "Alpha" trove classifier, as well as by the "a" in the version number.
84 What this means for you is that **until the formatter becomes stable,
85 you should expect some formatting to change in the future**.
87 Also, as a temporary safety measure, *Black* will check that the
88 reformatted code still produces a valid AST that is equivalent to the
89 original. This slows it down. If you're feeling confident, use
93 ## The *Black* code style
95 *Black* reformats entire files in place. It is not configurable. It
96 doesn't take previous formatting into account. It doesn't reformat
97 blocks that start with `# fmt: off` and end with `# fmt: on`. It also
98 recognizes [YAPF](https://github.com/google/yapf)'s block comments to
99 the same effect, as a courtesy for straddling code.
102 ### How *Black* wraps lines
104 *Black* ignores previous formatting and applies uniform horizontal
105 and vertical whitespace to your code. The rules for horizontal
106 whitespace are pretty obvious and can be summarized as: do whatever
107 makes `pycodestyle` happy. The coding style used by *Black* can be
108 viewed as a strict subset of PEP 8.
110 As for vertical whitespace, *Black* tries to render one full expression
111 or simple statement per line. If this fits the allotted line length,
126 If not, *Black* will look at the contents of the first outer matching
127 brackets and put that in a separate indented line.
131 l = [[n for n in list_bosses()], [n for n in list_employees()]]
136 [n for n in list_bosses()], [n for n in list_employees()]
140 If that still doesn't fit the bill, it will decompose the internal
141 expression further using the same rule, indenting matching brackets
142 every time. If the contents of the matching brackets pair are
143 comma-separated (like an argument list, or a dict literal, and so on)
144 then *Black* will first try to keep them on the same line with the
145 matching brackets. If that doesn't work, it will put all of them in
150 def very_important_function(template: str, *variables, file: os.PathLike, debug: bool = False):
151 """Applies `variables` to the `template` and writes to `file`."""
152 with open(file, 'w') as f:
157 def very_important_function(
163 """Applies `variables` to the `template` and writes to `file`."""
164 with open(file, "w") as f:
168 You might have noticed that closing brackets are always dedented and
169 that a trailing comma is always added. Such formatting produces smaller
170 diffs; when you add or remove an element, it's always just one line.
171 Also, having the closing bracket dedented provides a clear delimiter
172 between two distinct sections of the code that otherwise share the same
173 indentation level (like the arguments list and the docstring in the
179 You probably noticed the peculiar default line length. *Black* defaults
180 to 88 characters per line, which happens to be 10% over 80. This number
181 was found to produce significantly shorter files than sticking with 80
182 (the most popular), or even 79 (used by the standard library). In
183 general, [90-ish seems like the wise choice](https://youtu.be/wf-BqAjZb8M?t=260).
185 If you're paid by the line of code you write, you can pass
186 `--line-length` with a lower number. *Black* will try to respect that.
187 However, sometimes it won't be able to without breaking other rules. In
188 those rare cases, auto-formatted code will exceed your allotted limit.
190 You can also increase it, but remember that people with sight disabilities
191 find it harder to work with line lengths exceeding 100 characters.
192 It also adversely affects side-by-side diff review on typical screen
193 resolutions. Long lines also make it harder to present code neatly
194 in documentation or talk slides.
196 If you're using Flake8, you can bump `max-line-length` to 88 and forget
197 about it. Alternatively, use [Bugbear](https://github.com/PyCQA/flake8-bugbear)'s
198 B950 warning instead of E501 and keep the max line length at 80 which
199 you are probably already using. You'd do it like this:
204 select = C,E,F,W,B,B950
208 You'll find *Black*'s own .flake8 config file is configured like this.
209 If you're curious about the reasoning behind B950, Bugbear's documentation
210 explains it. The tl;dr is "it's like highway speed limits, we won't
211 bother you if you overdo it by a few km/h".
216 *Black* avoids spurious vertical whitespace. This is in the spirit of
217 PEP 8 which says that in-function vertical whitespace should only be
218 used sparingly. One exception is control flow statements: *Black* will
219 always emit an extra empty line after ``return``, ``raise``, ``break``,
220 ``continue``, and ``yield``. This is to make changes in control flow
221 more prominent to readers of your code.
223 *Black* will allow single empty lines inside functions, and single and
224 double empty lines on module level left by the original editors, except
225 when they're within parenthesized expressions. Since such expressions
226 are always reformatted to fit minimal space, this whitespace is lost.
228 It will also insert proper spacing before and after function definitions.
229 It's one line before and after inner functions and two lines before and
230 after module-level functions. *Black* will put those empty lines also
231 between the function definition and any standalone comments that
232 immediately precede the given function. If you want to comment on the
233 entire function, use a docstring or put a leading comment in the function
239 *Black* will add trailing commas to expressions that are split
240 by comma where each element is on its own line. This includes function
243 Unnecessary trailing commas are removed if an expression fits in one
244 line. This makes it 1% more likely that your line won't exceed the
245 allotted line length limit. Moreover, in this scenario, if you added
246 another argument to your call, you'd probably fit it in the same line
247 anyway. That doesn't make diffs any larger.
249 One exception to removing trailing commas is tuple expressions with
250 just one element. In this case *Black* won't touch the single trailing
251 comma as this would unexpectedly change the underlying data type. Note
252 that this is also the case when commas are used while indexing. This is
253 a tuple in disguise: ```numpy_array[3, ]```.
255 One exception to adding trailing commas is function signatures
256 containing `*`, `*args`, or `**kwargs`. In this case a trailing comma
257 is only safe to use on Python 3.6. *Black* will detect if your file is
258 already 3.6+ only and use trailing commas in this situation. If you
259 wonder how it knows, it looks for f-strings and existing use of trailing
260 commas in function signatures that have stars in them. In other words,
261 if you'd like a trailing comma in this situation and *Black* didn't
262 recognize it was safe to do so, put it there manually and *Black* will
267 *Black* prefers double quotes (`"` and `"""`) over single quotes (`'`
268 and `'''`). It will replace the latter with the former as long as it
269 does not result in more backslash escapes than before.
271 The main reason to standardize on a single form of quotes is aesthetics.
272 Having one kind of quotes everywhere reduces reader distraction.
273 It will also enable a future version of *Black* to merge consecutive
274 string literals that ended up on the same line (see
275 [#26](https://github.com/ambv/black/issues/26) for details).
277 Why settle on double quotes? They anticipate apostrophes in English
278 text. They match the docstring standard described in PEP 257. An
279 empty string in double quotes (`""`) is impossible to confuse with
280 a one double-quote regardless of fonts and syntax highlighting used.
281 On top of this, double quotes for strings are consistent with C which
282 Python interacts a lot with.
284 On certain keyboard layouts like US English, typing single quotes is
285 a bit easier than double quotes. The latter requires use of the Shift
286 key. My recommendation here is to keep using whatever is faster to type
287 and let *Black* handle the transformation.
290 ## Editor integration
294 Use [proofit404/blacken](https://github.com/proofit404/blacken).
299 Commands and shortcuts:
301 * `,=` or `:Black` to format the entire file (ranges not supported);
302 * `:BlackUpgrade` to upgrade *Black* inside the virtualenv;
303 * `:BlackVersion` to get the current version of *Black* inside the
307 * `g:black_fast` (defaults to `0`)
308 * `g:black_linelength` (defaults to `88`)
309 * `g:black_virtualenv` (defaults to `~/.vim/black`)
311 To install, copy the plugin from [vim/plugin/black.vim](https://github.com/ambv/black/tree/master/vim/plugin/black.vim).
312 Let me know if this requires any changes to work with Vim 8's builtin
313 `packadd`, or Pathogen, or Vundle, and so on.
315 This plugin **requires Vim 7.0+ built with Python 3.6+ support**. It
316 needs Python 3.6 to be able to run *Black* inside the Vim process which
317 is much faster than calling an external command.
319 On first run, the plugin creates its own virtualenv using the right
320 Python version and automatically installs *Black*. You can upgrade it later
321 by calling `:BlackUpgrade` and restarting Vim.
323 If you need to do anything special to make your virtualenv work and
324 install *Black* (for example you want to run a version from master), just
325 create a virtualenv manually and point `g:black_virtualenv` to it.
326 The plugin will use it.
328 **How to get Vim with Python 3.6?**
329 On Ubuntu 17.10 Vim comes with Python 3.6 by default.
330 On macOS with HomeBrew run: `brew install vim --with-python3`.
331 When building Vim from source, use:
332 `./configure --enable-python3interp=yes`. There's many guides online how
336 ### Visual Studio Code
338 Use [joslarson.black-vscode](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=joslarson.black-vscode).
343 Atom/Nuclide integration is planned by the author, others will
344 require external contributions.
346 Patches welcome! ✨ 🍰 ✨
348 Any tool that can pipe code through *Black* using its stdio mode (just
349 [use `-` as the file name](http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/special-chars.html#DASHREF2)).
350 The formatted code will be returned on stdout (unless `--check` was
351 passed). *Black* will still emit messages on stderr but that shouldn't
352 affect your use case.
354 This can be used for example with PyCharm's [File Watchers](https://www.jetbrains.com/help/pycharm/file-watchers.html).
359 **Dusty Phillips**, [writer](https://smile.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=dusty+phillips):
361 > Black is opinionated so you don't have to be.
363 **Hynek Schlawack**, [creator of `attrs`](http://www.attrs.org/), core
364 developer of Twisted and CPython:
366 > An auto-formatter that doesn't suck is all I want for Xmas!
368 **Carl Meyer**, [Django](https://www.djangoproject.com/) core developer:
370 > At least the name is good.
372 **Kenneth Reitz**, creator of [`requests`](http://python-requests.org/)
373 and [`pipenv`](https://docs.pipenv.org/):
375 > This vastly improves the formatting of our code. Thanks a ton!
380 Use the badge in your project's README.md:
383 [![Code style: black](https://img.shields.io/badge/code%20style-black-000000.svg)](https://github.com/ambv/black)
386 Looks like this: [![Code style: black](https://img.shields.io/badge/code%20style-black-000000.svg)](https://github.com/ambv/black)
394 ## Contributing to Black
396 In terms of inspiration, *Black* is about as configurable as *gofmt* and
397 *rustfmt* are. This is deliberate.
399 Bug reports and fixes are always welcome! However, before you suggest a
400 new feature or configuration knob, ask yourself why you want it. If it
401 enables better integration with some workflow, fixes an inconsistency,
402 speeds things up, and so on - go for it! On the other hand, if your
403 answer is "because I don't like a particular formatting" then you're not
404 ready to embrace *Black* yet. Such changes are unlikely to get accepted.
405 You can still try but prepare to be disappointed.
407 More details can be found in [CONTRIBUTING](CONTRIBUTING.md).
412 ### 18.3a5 (unreleased)
414 * added `--diff` (#87)
416 * add line breaks before all delimiters, except in cases like commas, to
417 better comply with PEP 8 (#73)
419 * standardize string literals to use double quotes (almost) everywhere
422 * fixed handling of standalone comments within nested bracketed
423 expressions; Black will no longer produce super long lines or put all
424 standalone comments at the end of the expression (#22)
426 * fixed 18.3a4 regression: don't crash and burn on empty lines with
427 trailing whitespace (#80)
429 * fixed 18.3a4 regression: `# yapf: disable` usage as trailing comment
430 would cause Black to not emit the rest of the file (#95)
432 * when CTRL+C is pressed while formatting many files, Black no longer
433 freaks out with a flurry of asyncio-related exceptions
435 * only allow up to two empty lines on module level and only single empty
436 lines within functions (#74)
441 * `# fmt: off` and `# fmt: on` are implemented (#5)
443 * automatic detection of deprecated Python 2 forms of print statements
444 and exec statements in the formatted file (#49)
446 * use proper spaces for complex expressions in default values of typed
447 function arguments (#60)
449 * only return exit code 1 when --check is used (#50)
451 * don't remove single trailing commas from square bracket indexing
454 * don't omit whitespace if the previous factor leaf wasn't a math
457 * omit extra space in kwarg unpacking if it's the first argument (#46)
459 * omit extra space in [Sphinx auto-attribute comments](http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/ext/autodoc.html#directive-autoattribute)
465 * don't remove single empty lines outside of bracketed expressions
468 * added ability to pipe formatting from stdin to stdin (#25)
470 * restored ability to format code with legacy usage of `async` as
473 * even better handling of numpy-style array indexing (#33, again)
478 * changed positioning of binary operators to occur at beginning of lines
479 instead of at the end, following [a recent change to PEP8](https://github.com/python/peps/commit/c59c4376ad233a62ca4b3a6060c81368bd21e85b)
482 * ignore empty bracket pairs while splitting. This avoids very weirdly
483 looking formattings (#34, #35)
485 * remove a trailing comma if there is a single argument to a call
487 * if top level functions were separated by a comment, don't put four
488 empty lines after the upper function
490 * fixed unstable formatting of newlines with imports
492 * fixed unintentional folding of post scriptum standalone comments
493 into last statement if it was a simple statement (#18, #28)
495 * fixed missing space in numpy-style array indexing (#33)
497 * fixed spurious space after star-based unary expressions (#31)
504 * only put trailing commas in function signatures and calls if it's
505 safe to do so. If the file is Python 3.6+ it's always safe, otherwise
506 only safe if there are no `*args` or `**kwargs` used in the signature
509 * fixed invalid spacing of dots in relative imports (#6, #13)
511 * fixed invalid splitting after comma on unpacked variables in for-loops
514 * fixed spurious space in parenthesized set expressions (#7)
516 * fixed spurious space after opening parentheses and in default
519 * fixed spurious space after unary operators when the operand was
520 a complex expression (#15)
525 * first published version, Happy 🍰 Day 2018!
529 * date-versioned (see: https://calver.org/)
534 Glued together by [Łukasz Langa](mailto:lukasz@langa.pl).
536 Maintained with [Carol Willing](mailto:carolcode@willingconsulting.com)
537 and [Carl Meyer](mailto:carl@oddbird.net).
539 Multiple contributions by:
540 * [Artem Malyshev](mailto:proofit404@gmail.com)
541 * [Daniel M. Capella](mailto:polycitizen@gmail.com)
542 * [Eli Treuherz](mailto:eli.treuherz@cgi.com)
544 * [Mika Naylor](mailto:mail@autophagy.io)
545 * [Osaetin Daniel](mailto:osaetindaniel@gmail.com)