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shtab

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• What: Automatically generate shell tab completion scripts for Python CLI apps
• Why: Speed & correctness. Alternatives like argcomplete <https://pypi.org/project/argcomplete>_ and pyzshcomplete <https://pypi.org/project/pyzshcomplete>_ are slow and have side-effects
• How: shtab processes an argparse.ArgumentParser object to generate a tab completion script for your shell

Features

• Outputs tab completion scripts for

  • bash
  • zsh
  • tcsh

• Supports

  • argparse <https://docs.python.org/library/argparse>_
  • docopt <https://pypi.org/project/docopt>_ (via argopt <https://pypi.org/project/argopt>_)

• Supports arguments, options and subparsers

• Supports choices (e.g. --say={hello,goodbye})

• Supports file and directory path completion

• Supports custom path completion (e.g. --file={*.txt})

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Installation

Choose one of:

• pip install shtab, or
• conda install -c conda-forge shtab

See operating system-specific instructions in the docs <https://docs.iterative.ai/shtab/#installation>_.

Usage

There are two ways of using shtab:

• CLI Usage <https://docs.iterative.ai/shtab/use/#cli-usage>_: shtab‘s own CLI interface for external applications

  • may not require any code modifications whatsoever
  • end-users execute shtab your_cli_app.your_parser_object

• Library Usage <https://docs.iterative.ai/shtab/use/#library-usage>_: as a library integrated into your CLI application

  • adds a couple of lines to your application
  • argument mode: end-users execute your_cli_app --print-completion {bash,zsh,tcsh}
  • subparser mode: end-users execute your_cli_app completion {bash,zsh,tcsh}

Examples

See the docs for usage examples <https://docs.iterative.ai/shtab/use/#main.py>_.

FAQs

Not working? Check out frequently asked questions <https://docs.iterative.ai/shtab/#faqs>_.

Alternatives

• argcomplete <https://pypi.org/project/argcomplete>_

  • executes the underlying script every time <TAB> is pressed (slow and has side-effects)

• pyzshcomplete <https://pypi.org/project/pyzshcomplete>_

  • executes the underlying script every time <TAB> is pressed (slow and has side-effects)
  • only provides zsh completion

• click <https://pypi.org/project/click>_

  • different framework completely replacing the builtin argparse
  • solves multiple problems (rather than POSIX-style “do one thing well”)

Contributions

Please do open issues <https://github.com/iterative/shtab/issues>_ & pull requests <https://github.com/iterative/shtab/pulls>_! Some ideas:

• support fish (#174 <https://github.com/iterative/shtab/pull/174>_)
• support powershell

See CONTRIBUTING.md <https://github.com/iterative/shtab/tree/main/CONTRIBUTING.md>_ for more guidance.

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