mklists

Refreshes folders of plain-text lists in sync with your evolving rules

This will be a completely new reimplementation of the script previously known as shuffle (1994), shawkle (2006), shawkle.py (2011), originally planned as a project to incrementally improve shawkle.py under various names (listmunger, puralista, ascilist).

A frozen, stable, copy of shawkle is included in this project, for reference, under the name shawkle-20130102.py, along with shawkle-alt-20130102.py, an alternative algorithm for a key part of the script.

How to use mklists quickly:

Add mklists as an environment variable.

$ alias mklists='python /absolute/path/to/mklists.py'

Change to the directory for list making.

$ cd /change/to/your/lists/folder

Run mklists

$ mklists

Wish list:

• Unit tests (most of the code is about testing data integrity anyway) - will start with these
• Configuration files in YAML
• Default configuration file generated when program first run
• Per-directory configuration not just of rules, but of all options (over-rideable with command-line switches)
• Object-oriented design (overkill?)
• Display process information at various levels of verbosity, or optionally write out event log
• Python distribution package
• Running mklists for the first time will generate a default configuration file, .mklistsrc

Tag line - which one conveys the idea best?

• Tweaks folders of plain-text lists as you edit your evolving rules
• Rearranges folders of plain-text lists according to your evolving rules
• Refreshes folders of plain-text lists to match your evolving rules
• Synchs folders of plain-text lists to match your evolving rules
• Tweaks folders of plain-text lists in synch with evolving content rules

2012-12-26. First posted. 2013-01-20. Add test data, frozen reference copy of