Programmatic python source formatter

Question

I have a large body of python code that needs to have a pep8-compliant style/format imposed on it. There are variants of pep8 that various rules (like this one by a coworker), but the hardest thing is to deal with splitting too long lines and formatting the modified code.

I've looked up the questions on this:

1. python-formatter-tool
2. python-source-formatter-pretty-printer

They are from 2009 and 2010. I am hoping that better tools have been developed since then.

I know about PythonTidy which is pretty good but makes lots of code worse, IMHO. Pylint detects formatting errors but does not correct them. Web services are not really relevant to my requirements because I want a tool that can be part of a build.

Does anyone have a recommendation that has not already been covered? Thanks.

Answer 1

Another one that looks pretty decent: autopep8

But note that blindly following all the conventions in PEP8 isn't really in the spirit of PEP8. From PEP8 itself:

But most importantly: know when to be inconsistent -- sometimes the style guide just doesn't apply.

Answer 2

black is another contender. It's selling point is that is is barely configurable, so your team wastes less time quibbling about details.

There's an online demo here: black.now.sh

Side-note: black, yapf, and autopep8 have python language server plugins, so they integrate nicely with text editors including atom and vscode.