Question

I have a project that uses Python (2.* flavors) extensively and I am wondering if there is a terminal menu library or something to that effect? I am looking to breathe some flavor and life into my script by simplifying some of the options using arrow key highlightable options, some color, etc etc. I vaguely recall there being a way to make a bash shell terminal menu but I’m not at all sure how I would pass user input from bash to the python script, perhaps have a bash terminal menu push the script call with sysarggs? I’d like something on the python side if possible. Any suggestions?

Also just a random question, kind of fits in here since we’re on the topic of terminal aesthetics, what’s the best way to handle a counter? My script looks for image files, then when it finds one it clears the terminal with a subprocess call to clear and then prints the total images found again IE 10 images, find one, clear, print “11 images found”, sometimes my script works REAL fast and I feel this detriments performance. Thoughts?

Thanks so much everyone, I love stack overflow 😉

Edit – Thanks for all the quick responses! I have alot of options to mull over. I gave everyone an upvote because all of your responses are helpful. I will check out all the libraries when I get home and try to pick one of you for an answer depending on what hashes out the best, wish I could pick you all though because all of your answers are relevant! Much appreciated folks. I’ll report back in once I get home from work and get a chance to get some coding in 😉

Edit 2 – A clarification on the counter/progress display, looking for a way to keep this from detrimenting performance when my script finds thousands of images in a very short ammount of time, this is real chopped up python…

for each item in list:
    if item ends with .jpg
        cnt=cnt+1
        do stuff with image file
        subprocess.call('clear')
        print str(cnt)+" total images processed."

Thanks again!

Answer 1

There’s a library called Urwid that offers menus and some more. I never used it for serious purposes, but the it work pretty fine with my preliminary experiences on it. It works on Un*x systems only though. (The project page says it works under Cygwin, but I never tried.)