CMD module: building a Command Line Interpreter using Python.

I’ve been searching documentation about build a Command Line Interpreter (CLI) from some time ago. My requirements were:

• I was needed a command history
• I was needed TAB auto-completion.
• … a easy framework.

Against I could expect, I didn’t found a lot of information on Internet about this aim. So after some time searching documentation about it, I had some luck and I finally found some refers to cmd Python module (oh, what surprise!):

• http://www.doughellmann.com/PyMOTW/cmd/

Next lines, show a simple example about how it work:

import cmd

class HelloWorld(cmd.Cmd):
    """Simple command processor example."""

    def do_greet(self, person):
        if person:
            print "hi,", person
        else:
            print 'hi'

    def help_greet(self):
        print '\n'.join([ 'greet [person]',
                           'Greet the named person',
                           ])

    def do_EOF(self, line):
        return True

if __name__ == '__main__':
    HelloWorld().cmdloop()

… and this is a example of use:

$ python cmd_do_help.py
(Cmd) help greet
greet [person]
Greet the named person

One extra reference:

CDM2 is a extentesion of CMD. It adds several features for command-prompt tools:

• Searchable command history (commands: “hi”, “li”, “run”)
• Load commands from file, save to file, edit commands in file
• Multi-line commands
• Case-insensitive commands
• Special-character shortcut commands (beyond cmd’s “@” and “!”)
• Settable environment parameters
• Parsing commands with flags
• > (filename), >> (filename) redirect output to file
• < (filename) gets input from file
• bare >, >>, < redirect to/from paste buffer
• accepts abbreviated commands when unambiguous
• py enters interactive Python console
• test apps against sample session transcript (see example/example.py)