Miscellaneous Features

Timer

Turn the timer setting on, and cmd2 will show the wall time it takes for each command to execute.

Exiting

Mention quit, and EOF handling built into cmd2.

select

Presents numbered options to user, as bash select.

app.select is called from within a method (not by the user directly; it is app.select, not app.do_select).

Cmd.select(opts: Union[str, List[str], List[Tuple[Any, Optional[str]]]], prompt: str = 'Your choice? ') → str

Presents a numbered menu to the user. Modeled after the bash shell’s SELECT. Returns the item chosen.

Argument opts can be:

a single string -> will be split into one-word options
a list of strings -> will be offered as options
a list of tuples -> interpreted as (value, text), so that the return value can differ from the text advertised to the user
def do_eat(self, arg):
    sauce = self.select('sweet salty', 'Sauce? ')
    result = '{food} with {sauce} sauce, yum!'
    result = result.format(food=arg, sauce=sauce)
    self.stdout.write(result + '\n')
(Cmd) eat wheaties
    1. sweet
    2. salty
Sauce? 2
wheaties with salty sauce, yum!

Disabling Commands

cmd2 supports disabling commands during runtime. This is useful if certain commands should only be available when the application is in a specific state. When a command is disabled, it will not show up in the help menu or tab complete. If a user tries to run the command, a command-specific message supplied by the developer will be printed. The following functions support this feature.

enable_command()
Enable an individual command
enable_category()
Enable an entire category of commands
disable_command()
Disable an individual command and set the message that will print when this command is run or help is called on it while disabled
disable_category()
Disable an entire category of commands and set the message that will print when anything in this category is run or help is called on it while disabled

See the definitions of these functions for descriptions of their arguments.

See the do_enable_commands() and do_disable_commands() functions in the HelpCategories example for a demonstration.

Default to shell

Every cmd2 application can execute operating-system level (shell) commands with shell or a ! shortcut:

(Cmd) shell which python
/usr/bin/python
(Cmd) !which python
/usr/bin/python

However, if the parameter default_to_shell is True, then every command will be attempted on the operating system. Only if that attempt fails (i.e., produces a nonzero return value) will the application’s own default method be called.

(Cmd) which python
/usr/bin/python
(Cmd) my dog has fleas
sh: my: not found
*** Unknown syntax: my dog has fleas