Intentionally Blank

Canonicalise the leading indentation of blank lines in text files.

Installation

The intentionally-blank package is available on the Python Package Index (PyPI):

The package supports Python 3 only. To install:

$ python -m pip install intentionally-blank

Synopsis

For the purposes of this tool, a "blank line" is a line containing only whitespace characters.

Intentionally Blank can apply one or more formatters to a text file for the purposes of modifying the arrangement or representation of whitespace.

To get command-line help, use the --help option:

$ intentionally-blank --help
Usage: intentionally-blank [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

Options:
  --verbosity [CRITICAL|ERROR|WARNING|INFO|DEBUG|NOTSET]
                                  The logging level to use.
  --version                       Show the version and exit.
  --help                          Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  describe-format
  format
  list-formats

To list the available formatters, used the list-formats command:

$ intentionally-blank list-formats
empty
identity
leading
visible

To describe the action of particular formatter, use the describe-format command:

$ intentionally-blank describe-format --format=leading
Blank lines have leading whitespace equal to that on the previous non-blank line.

To actually reformat a text file, we can use the format command. To get help on a particular command, like format, use the command and the --help option:

$ intentionally-blank format --help
Usage: intentionally-blank format [OPTIONS] INPUT OUTPUT

Options:
  --format [empty|identity|leading|visible]
  --help                          Show this message and exit.

Now, use the format command to adjust whitespace:

$ intentionally-blank format --format=leading infile.txt outfile.txt

To have blank lines be completely empty save for the terminating newline sequence, use --format=empty:

$ intentionally-blank format --format=empty infile.txt outfile.txt

Multiple --format options can be provided, and they will be applied in the order given. Here we apply the "leading" format, and then the "visible" format which makes whitespace characters visible:

$ intentionally-blank format --format=leading --format=visible infile.txt outfile.txt

Either the INPUT or OUTPUT positional arguments can be replaced with a hyphen - to cause input to be read from stdin or output to be written to stdout:

$ intentionally-blank format --format=leading --format=visible infile.txt -
"""Model␣for␣aircraft␣flights."""↵
↵
↵
class␣Flight:↵
␣␣␣␣"""A␣flight␣with␣a␣particular␣passenger␣aircraft."""↵
␣␣␣␣↵
␣␣␣␣def␣__init__(self,␣number,␣aircraft):↵
␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣if␣not␣number[:2].isalpha():↵
␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣raise␣ValueError(f"No␣airline␣code␣in␣'{number}'")↵
␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣↵