alphasort

Alphasort

Problem Statement

Keeping lines (alphabetically) sorted is always a pain. Say we have a long list that we want to maintain alphabetical sorting on (for the sake of readability and maintenance).

animals = [
    "alligator",
    "monkey",
    "zebra",
]

Now We want to add “cat” to this list...

Either:

• dev remembers to insert in correct location
• dev forgets and PR reviewers have to leave comment about it (just another thing prolonging PR time)
• the list falls out of sorting for a while then gets included as a refactor in a PR, adding many lines changed which inflates PR size and leads to unnecessary merge conflicts

Introducing Alphasort

We add macros (directives) and a tool that can parse the files for this and to sort

animals = [
    # alphasort: on
    "apple",
    "monkey",
    "zebra",
    # alphasort: off
]

And yes, it works on most other files too, including comment deliminators like // and more. It even works with json if you do "_comment": "alphasort: on"

Setup

pip install alphasort

Usage

alphasort "./path/**/*.py"

Also recommend adding it

• to your IDE on-save commands
• to your pre-commit
• to your CI checks

Argcomplete

This project is equiped with argcomplete which you can enable via running this:

eval "$(register-python-argcomplete alphasort)"

P.S.

This is inspired by other such macros like:

# fmt: off
mylist = [3, 2, 1]  # Black will not touch this line.
# fmt: on

I’m honestly surprised something like this doesn’t exist. But here it is now. So, you're welcome 😁