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

.. image:: https://travis-ci.org/wolever/pprintpp.svg?branch=master :target: https://travis-ci.org/wolever/pprintpp

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. 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

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. As an ipython <https://github.com/ipython/ipython>_ extension::

   In [1]: %load_ext pprintpp

   This will use pprintpp for ipython's output.

   To load this extension when ipython starts, put the previous line in your startup file <https://ipython.org/ipython-doc/1/config/overview.html#startup-files>_.

   You can change the indentation level like so::

   In [2]: %config PPrintPP.indentation = 4

4. To monkeypatch pprint::

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

   Note: the original pprint module will be available with import pprint_original. Additionally, a warning will be issued if pprint has already been imported. This can be suppressed by passing quiet=True.

5. And, if you really want, it can even be imported as a regular module:

   import pprintpp pprintpp.pprint(...)

Usability Protips

pp

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

.. code:: pycon

    >>> 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:

.. code:: pycon

    >>> 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:

.. code:: pycon

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

The output stream's encoding will be considered too:

.. code:: pycon

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

Subclassess of built-in collection types which don't define a new ``__repr__``
will have their class name explicitly added to their repr. For example:

.. code:: pycon

    >>> class MyList(list):
    ...     pass
    ...
    >>> pprint(MyList())
    MyList()
    >>> pprint(MyList([1, 2, 3]))
    MyList([1, 2, 3])

Note that, as you might expect, custom ``__repr__`` methods will be respected:

.. code:: pycon

    >>> class MyList(list):
    ...     def __repr__(self):
    ...         return "custom repr!"
    ...
    >>> pprint(MyList())
    custom repr!

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

Example

With printpp:

.. code:: pycon

>>> 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'}}