README.md

pythonskeletonsimple

A simple single-file Python boilerplate for writing simple command-line shell scripts.

Use pythonskeletonsimple when the project uses only modules that are provided with the standard Python installation. For more complicated projects, consider pythonskeleton instead.

This project shows some simple approaches to writing modular code:

• Use the argparse module to parse command line options. Command line options are stored in the global variable ARGS since they will never change and it is inconvenient and unnecessary to pass them around. (For unit testing, ARGS can be set directly or the implementation can be separated from the UI processing code.)

• Use a main() function and put it near the top of the file. This allows readers of the code to quickly see what the script is doing. Put parse_args() near the top as well, which will serve as basic documentation for the script.

• Define and catch a Fail exception to easily handle fatal script errors.

• Use shelve module for data persistence.

• Implement helper functions and use a NamedTuple to store the results. Since NamedTuples are immutable, store intermediate results in a dict and then initialize the NamedTuple from the dict when returning from the helper function.