orientalperil/pprintpp

pprint++: a drop-in replacement for pprint that's actually pretty

pprint++: a drop-in replacement for pprint that's actually pretty

Now with Python 3 support!

Installation

pprint++ can be installed with Python 2 or Python 3 using pip or easy_install:

$ pip install pprintpp
- OR -
$ easy_install pprintpp

Usage

pprint++ can be used in three ways:

1. As a regular module:

   >>> import pprintpp
   >>> pprintpp.pprint(...)
   

2. As a command-line program, which will read Python literals from standard in and pretty-print them:

   $ echo "{'hello': 'world'}" | pypprint
   {'hello': 'world'}
   

3. To monkeypatch pprint:

   >>> import pprintpp
   >>> pprintpp.monkeypatch()
   >>> import pprint
   >>> pprint.pprint(...)
   

   Note: the original pprint will be available with import pprint_original.

4. Through the separate pp package:

   $ pip install pp-ez
   $ python
   ...
   >>> import pp
   >>> pp(["Hello", "world"])
   ["Hello", "world"]
   

   For more, see https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pp-ez

Usability Protips

pp

For bonus code aesthetics, pprintpp.pprint can be imported as pp:

>>> from pprintpp import pprint as pp
>>> pp(...)

And if that is just too many letters, the pp-ez package can be installed from PyPI, ensuring that pretty-printing is never more than an import pp away:

$ pip install pp-ez
$ python
...
>>> import pp
>>> pp(["Hello", "world"])
["Hello", "world"]

For more, see https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pp-ez

Why is it prettier?

Unlike pprint, pprint++ strives to emit a readable, largely PEP8-compliant, representation of its input.

It also has explicit support for: the collections module (defaultdict and Counter) and numpy arrays:

>>> import numpy as np
>>> from collections import defaultdict, Counter
>>> pprint([np.array([[1,2],[3,4]]), defaultdict(int, {"foo": 1}), Counter("aaabbc")])
[
    array([[1, 2],
           [3, 4]]),
    defaultdict(<type 'int'>, {'foo': 1}),
    Counter({'a': 3, 'b': 2, 'c': 1}),
]

Unicode characters, when possible, will be printed un-escaped. This is done by checking both the output stream's encoding (defaulting to utf-8) and the character's Unicode category. An effort is made to print only characters which will be visually unambiguous: letters and numbers will be printed un-escaped, spaces, combining characters, and control characters will be escaped:

>>> unistr = u"\xe9e\u0301"
>>> print unistr
éé
>>> pprint(unistr)
u'ée\u0301'

The output stream's encoding will be considered too:

>>> import io
>>> stream = io.BytesIO()
>>> stream.encoding = "ascii"
>>> pprint(unistr, stream=stream)
>>> print stream.getvalue()
u'\xe9e\u0301'

Note: pprint++ is still under development, so the format will change and improve over time.

Example

With printpp:

>>> import pprintpp
>>> pprintpp.pprint(["Hello", np.array([[1,2],[3,4]])])
[
    'Hello',
    array([[1, 2],
           [3, 4]]),
]
>>> pprintpp.pprint(tweet)
{
    'coordinates': None,
    'created_at': 'Mon Jun 27 19:32:19 +0000 2011',
    'entities': {
        'hashtags': [],
        'urls': [
            {
                'display_url': 'tumblr.com/xnr37hf0yz',
                'expanded_url': 'http://tumblr.com/xnr37hf0yz',
                'indices': [107, 126],
                'url': 'http://t.co/cCIWIwg',
            },
        ],
        'user_mentions': [],
    },
    'place': None,
    'source': '<a href="http://www.tumblr.com/" rel="nofollow">Tumblr</a>',
    'truncated': False,
    'user': {
        'contributors_enabled': True,
        'default_profile': False,
        'entities': {'hashtags': [], 'urls': [], 'user_mentions': []},
        'favourites_count': 20,
        'id_str': '6253282',
        'profile_link_color': '0094C2',
    },
}

Without printpp:

>>> import pprint
>>> import numpy as np
>>> pprint.pprint(["Hello", np.array([[1,2],[3,4]])])
['Hello', array([[1, 2],
       [3, 4]])]
>>> tweet = {'coordinates': None, 'created_at': 'Mon Jun 27 19:32:19 +0000 2011', 'entities': {'hashtags': [], 'urls': [{'display_url': 'tumblr.com/xnr37hf0yz', 'expanded_url': 'http://tumblr.com/xnr37hf0yz', 'indices': [107, 126], 'url': 'http://t.co/cCIWIwg'}], 'user_mentions': []}, 'place': None, 'source': '<a href="http://www.tumblr.com/" rel="nofollow">Tumblr</a>', 'truncated': False, 'user': {'contributors_enabled': True, 'default_profile': False, 'entities': {'hashtags': [], 'urls': [], 'user_mentions': []}, 'favourites_count': 20, 'id_str': '6253282', 'profile_link_color': '0094C2'}}
>>> pprint.pprint(tweet)
{'coordinates': None,
 'created_at': 'Mon Jun 27 19:32:19 +0000 2011',
 'entities': {'hashtags': [],
              'urls': [{'display_url': 'tumblr.com/xnr37hf0yz',
                        'expanded_url': 'http://tumblr.com/xnr37hf0yz',
                        'indices': [107, 126],
                        'url': 'http://t.co/cCIWIwg'}],
              'user_mentions': []},
 'place': None,
 'source': '<a href="http://www.tumblr.com/" rel="nofollow">Tumblr</a>',
 'truncated': False,
 'user': {'contributors_enabled': True,
          'default_profile': False,
          'entities': {'hashtags': [], 'urls': [], 'user_mentions': []},
          'favourites_count': 20,
          'id_str': '6253282',
          'profile_link_color': '0094C2'}}