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Comment by lkbm | Hacker News Reader

I used to pipe things through black for that. (a script that imported black, not just black on the command line.)

I also had `j2p` and `p2j` that would convert between python (formatted via black) and json (formatted via jq), and the `j2p_clip`/`p2j_clip` versions that would pipe from clipboard and back into clipboards.

It's worth taking the time to build a few simple scripts for things you do a lot. I used to open up the repl and import json to convert between json and python dicts multiple times a day, so spending a few minutes throwing together a simple script to do it was well worth the effort.

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part of what i ended up with was this:

    {'country': ['25', '32', '6', '37', '72', '22', '17', '39', '14', '10',
                 '35', '43', '56', '36', '110', '11', '26', '12', '4', '5'],
     'timeZone': '8', 'dateFrom': '2024-05-01', 'dateTo': '2024-05-30',

black is the opposite extreme from what i wanted; https://black.readthedocs.io/en/stable/the_black_code_style/... explains:

> If a data structure literal (tuple, list, set, dict) or a line of “from” imports cannot fit in the allotted length, it’s always split into one element per line.

i'm not interested in minimizing diffs. i'm interested in being able to see all the fields of one record on one screen—moreover, i'd like to be able to see more than one record at a time so i can compare what's the same and what's different

black seems to be designed for the kind of person who always eats at mcdonald's when they travel because they value predictability over quality

My understanding of black is that it solves bikeshedding by making everyone a little unhappy.

For aligned column readability and other scenarios, # fmt: off and # fmt: on become crucial. The problem is that like # type: ignore, those start spreading if you're not careful.

My only complaint with black is that it only splits long definitions into per-line if they exceed a limit. That’s probably configurable, now that I write it down.

Other than that, I actually quite like its formatting choices.

Line length is definitely configurable. All it takes is adding the following on pyproject.toml[1]:

  [tool.black]
  line-length = 100

Aside from matrix-like or column aligned data, the only truly awful thing I've encountered has been broken f-string handling[2].

[1]: Example from https://github.com/pythonarcade/arcade/blob/808e1dafcf1da30f...

[2]: https://github.com/psf/black/issues/4389

yeah; unless your coworkers are hindu, you can solve 'bikeshedding' about which restaurant to go to by going to mcdonald's, too

Fair. I spent some time trying to figure out how to make it do roughly that before giving up.

i kind of get the vibe from the black documentation that it's written by the kind of person who thinks we're bad people for wanting that, and perhaps that everyone should wear the same uniform because vanity is sinful and aesthetics are frivolous

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