█ kwbar – Print Keywords as a Bar Chart

Easily create a bar chart with kwbar; pass keyword arguments that can be converted to float.

I made this for fun, but then I thought other people might actually find it useful.

Features

kwbar several useful features:

• Plots bars showing the relative magnitide (absolute value) of kwargs.
• Prints the values of the passed keyword arguments in scientific notation.
• Pure Python and zero dependencies.
• Minimal implementation (<100 lines total) which can be audited in a few minutes.
• Prints the names of the passed keyword arguments.
• Plots any object that can be converted to float (SupportsFloat).
• Customizable width, the entire terminal width is used by default.
• Customizable significant figures, 3 by default.
• Shows value labels inside bars, making the output width predictable. If the bars are too small, the value labels appear outside of them.
• Handles inf and NaN values.
• Negative values are (ANSI) colored red and can be customized.
• Respects the NO_COLOR environment variable.
• Has an ASCII mode, enabled on import when stdout is not TTY.
• Warns on stderr (can be disabled) if the output will have to overrun the configured width. Overflow can generally be avoided by configuting options such as BEFORE=True.
• Fixed output width. This can be done by either:
  1. Setting BEFORE = True, or
  2. setting TRUNCATE and WIDTH to satisfy: WIDTH - TRUNCATE - SF - 17 >= 0.

Options

kwbar supports the following options, which are set by modifying module variables:

import kwbar

kwbar.WIDTH = -1  # Set the output width, -1 = use the terminal width.
kwbar.SF = 2  # The number of sig figs to show.
kwbar.SHOW_VAL = True  # Show values inside the bars
kwbar.TRUNCATE = 0.25  # Truncate long keys (<=1 = % of WIDTH, >1 = columns).
kwbar.BAR_CHARS = " ▏▎▍▌▋▊▉█"  # Characters to use for the bars.
kwbar.POS = ""  # ANSI escape code for positive values.
kwbar.NEG = "\x1b[31m"  # ANSI escape code for negative values.
kwbar.WARN = True  # Show a warning if the output will overrun the configured width.
kwbar.PAD = " "  # Padding characters shown before finite and non-finite values.
kwbar.BEFORE = False  # Show the value labels before the bar instead of inside.

Convenience Functions

There are also a couple of functions to set multiple options at once:

ASCII Mode

Sets BAR_CHARS and PAD to ASCII characters. Also disables all ANSI escape codes and sets BEFORE true.

import kwbar
kwbar.WIDTH = 50
kwbar.ascii()
kwbar.kwbar(one=1, two=2, three=3, four=4)

  one +1.00e+00 XXXXXXXX
  two +2.00e+00 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
three +3.00e+00 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
 four +4.00e+00 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Hotdog Mode

import kwbar
kwbar.WIDTH = 33
kwbar.hotdog()
kwbar.kwbar(one=1, two=2, three=3, four=4)

  one 🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭¾
  two 🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭½
three 🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭¼
 four 🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭

How do I...?

Reset All Options

import kwbar

kwbar.ascii()

# Reset to defaults.
import importlib

importlib.reload(kwbar)

Use Keys That Are Not Valid Python Keywords

import kwbar

kwbar.ascii()
kwbar.kwbar(**{"one": 1, "-2": -2, "pi": 3.14})

one +1.00e+00 XXXXXX
 -2 -2.00e+00 XXXXXXXXXXXX
 pi +3.14e+00 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Print Dogs Instead of Hotdogs

import kwbar
kwbar.hotdog()
kwbar.BAR_CHARS = kwbar.BAR_CHARS[:-1] + "🐶" # Replace the last character.
kwbar.kwbar(one=1, two=2, pi=3.14)

one 🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶¼
two 🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶½
 pi 🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶

Themes

Just some ideas for how you could customize the output.

Lines

import kwbar
kwbar.hotdog()
kwbar.BAR_CHARS = "╸━"

Blue Red Lines

import kwbar
kwbar.hotdog()
kwbar.BAR_CHARS = "╸━"
kwbar.POS = "\x1b[34m"
kwbar.NEG = "\x1b[31m"

Slices

import kwbar
kwbar.hotdog()
kwbar.BAR_CHARS = "◔◑◕●"

Quater Tally

import kwbar
kwbar.hotdog()
kwbar.BAR_CHARS = " ¼½¾1"

Eighths

kwbar.hotdog()
kwbar.BAR_CHARS = " ⅛¼⅜½⅝¾⅞1"

Hatching

kwbar.hotdog()
kwbar.BAR_CHARS = "🥚🐣🐥"

FAQs

These are questions that I frequently asked myself while making this.

Why did you make this?

For fun!

Why did you format the script to fill 80 characters on a line?

Because I could and it made me happy.

Why did you use module variables for configuration?

Because it kept the implementation simple/minimal. This also means that if you import kwbar in multiple places within a script, it will have a consistent style and does not need to be configured multiple times.

How do I have multiple kwbar copies with different configurations?

The configuration for kwbar affects all calls to kwbar.kwbar, becuase it is a static function using module variables for configuration. If you really want to do this, you can, but it feels like a hideous hack:

import sys
import importlib

SPEC_KWBAR = importlib.util.find_spec('kwbar')
kwbar2 = importlib.util.module_from_spec(SPEC_KWBAR)
SPEC_KWBAR.loader.exec_module(kwbar2)
sys.modules['kwbar2'] = kwbar2

Now you have another kwbar called kwbar2 with a completely seperate configuration.

>>> kwbar.WIDTH = 40
>>> kwbar2.WIDTH = 50
>>> print(kwbar.WIDTH)
40
>>> print(kwbar2.WIDTH)
50

Why didn't you just make the first argument a dictionary and use kwargs for configuration?

Becuase that was less fun that using only kwargs.