PyPI · #3179 most downloaded on PyPI

cmd2

4.2.42.1M downloads/mopython-cmd2/cmd2 ↗New releases in your daily digest, changelog included.

cmd2 - quickly build feature-rich and user-friendly interactive command line applications in Python

Last release 16 days ago
08 Sep 2026
Ships fairly regularly
a new release about every 3 weeks
Nearly every release is documented
notes for 60 of the last 60 stable releases
1 version withdrawn
withdrawn after publishing
19 years old
174 releases · first in 2008

Release timeline

174 releases since 2008

2008201020122014

Releases

0.8.221 Mar 20183 sources agree
Fixed a bug in tab completion of command names within sub-menus
Bug Fixes

Fixed a bug in tab completion of command names within sub-menus

Fixed a bug when using persistent readline history in Python 2.7

Fixed a bug where the AddSubmenu decorator didn't work with a default value for shared_attributes

Added a check to ppaged() to only use a pager when running in a real fully functional terminal

Enhancements

Added quit_on_sigint attribute to enable canceling current line instead of quitting when Ctrl+C is typed

Added possibility of having readline history preservation in a SubMenu

Added table_display.py example to demonstrate how to display tabular data

Added command aliasing with alias and unalias commands

Added the ability to load an initialization script at startup

See alias_startup.py for an example

Added a default SIGINT handler which terminates any open pipe subprocesses and re-raises a KeyboardInterrupt

For macOS, will load the gnureadline module if available and readline if not
Open source →

One column per quarter.

Attributes Removed (can cause breaking changes)

Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug if a non-existent do_* method was added to the exclude_from_help list
- Fixed a bug in a unit test which would fail if your home directory was empty on a Linux system
- Fixed outdated help text for the edit command
- Fixed outdated remove_unused.py
Enhancements
- Added support for sub-menus.
  - See submenus.py for an example of how to use it
- Added option for persistent readline history
  - See persistent_history.py for an example
  - See the Searchable command history section of the documentation for more info
- Improved PyPI packaging by including unit tests and examples in the tarball
- Improved documentation to make it more obvious that poutput() should be used instead of print()
- exclude_from_help and excludeFromHistory are now instance instead of class attributes
- Added flag and index based tab completion helper functions
  - See tab_completion.py
- Added support for displaying output which won't fit on the screen via a pager using ppaged()
  - See paged_output.py
Attributes Removed (can cause breaking changes)
- abbrev - Removed support for abbreviated commands
  - Good tab completion makes this unnecessary and its presence could cause harmful unintended actions
- case_insensitive - Removed support for case-insensitive command parsing
  - Its presence wasn't very helpful and could cause harmful unintended actions

Open source →

0.8.01 Feb 2018Deprecated3 sources agree

The old options decorator for optparse-based argument parsing is now _deprecated_

Bug Fixes
- Fixed unit tests on Python 3.7 due to changes in how re.escape() behaves in Python 3.7
- Fixed a bug where unknown commands were getting saved in the history
Enhancements
- Three new decorators for do_* commands to make argument parsing easier
  - with_argument_list decorator to change argument type from str to List[str]
    - do_* commands get a single argument which is a list of strings, as pre-parsed by shlex.split()
  - with_argparser decorator for strict argparse-based argument parsing of command arguments
    - do_* commands get a single argument which is the output of argparse.parse_args()
  - with_argparser_and_unknown_args decorator for argparse-based argument parsing, but allows unknown args
    - do_* commands get two arguments, the output of argparse.parse_known_args()
- See the Argument Processing section of the documentation for more information on these decorators
  - Alternatively, see the argparse_example.py and arg_print.py examples
- Added support for Argparse subcommands when using the with_argument_parser or * *with_argparser_and_unknown_args** decorators
  - See subcommands.py for an example of how to use subcommands
  - Tab completion of subcommand names is automatically supported
- The __relative_load command is now hidden from the help menu by default
  - This command is not intended to be called from the command line, only from within scripts
- The set command now has an additional -a/--all option to also display read-only settings
- The history command can now run, edit, and save prior commands, in addition to displaying prior commands.
- The history command can now automatically generate a transcript file for regression testing
  - This makes creating regression tests for your cmd2 application trivial
Commands Removed
- The cmdenvironment has been removed and its functionality incorporated into the -a/--all argument to **set **
- The show command has been removed. Its functionality has always existing within set and continues to do so
- The save command has been removed. The capability to save commands is now part of the history command.
- The run command has been removed. The capability to run prior commands is now part of the history command.
Other changes
- The edit command no longer allows you to edit prior commands. The capability to edit prior commands is now part of the history command. The edit command still allows you to edit arbitrary files.
- the autorun_on_edit setting has been removed.
- For Python 3.4 and earlier, cmd2 now has an additional dependency on the contextlib2 module
Deprecations
- The old options decorator for optparse-based argument parsing is now deprecated
  - The old decorator is still present for now, but will be removed in a future release
  - cmd2 no longer includes optparse.make_option, so if your app needs it import directly from optparse

Open source →

0.7.94 Jan 20183 sources agree

Improved documentation for modifying shortcuts (command aliases)

Bug Fixes
- Fixed a couple broken examples
Enhancements
- Improved documentation for modifying shortcuts (command aliases)
- Made pyreadline a dependency on Windows to ensure tab completion works
Other changes
- Abandoned official support for Python 3.3. It should still work, just don't have an easy way to test it anymore.

Open source →

0.7.89 Nov 20173 sources agree

Fixed poutput() so it can print an integer zero and other falsy things

Bug Fixes
- Fixed poutput() so it can print an integer zero and other falsy things
- Fixed a bug which was causing autodoc to fail for building docs on Readthedocs
- Fixed bug due to pyperclip dependency radically changing its project structure in latest version
Enhancements
- Improved documentation for user-settable environment parameters
- Improved documentation for overriding the default supported comment styles
- Added runcmds_plus_hooks() method to run multiple commands w/o a cmdloop

Open source →

0.7.725 Aug 2017Breaking3 sources agree

This makes a breaking change to the format and expectations of transcript testing

Bug Fixes
- Added workaround for bug which occurs in Python 2.7 on Linux when pygtk is installed
- pfeedback() now honors feedback_to_output setting and won't redirect when it is False
- For edit command, both editor and filename can now have spaces in the name/path
- Fixed a bug which occurred when stdin was a pipe instead of a tty due to input redirection
Enhancements
- feedback_to_output now defaults to False so info like command timing won't redirect
- Transcript regular expressions now have predictable, tested, and documented behavior
  - This makes a breaking change to the format and expectations of transcript testing
  - The prior behavior removed whitespace before making the comparison, now whitespace must match exactly
  - Prior version did not allow regexes with whitespace, new version allows any regex
- Improved display for load command and input redirection when echo is True

Open source →

0.7.611 Aug 20173 sources agree

Case-sensitive command parsing was completely broken and has been fixed

Bug Fixes
- Case-sensitive command parsing was completely broken and has been fixed
- <Ctrl>+d now properly quits when case-sensitive command parsing is enabled
- Fixed some pyperclip clipboard interaction bugs on Linux
- Fixed some timing bugs when running unit tests in parallel by using monkeypatch
Enhancements
- Enhanced tab completion of cmd2 command names to support case-insensitive completion
- Added an example showing how to remove unused commands
- Improved how transcript testing handles prompts with ANSI escape codes by stripping them
- Greatly improved implementation for how command output gets piped to a shell command

Open source →

0.7.58 Jul 20173 sources agree

case_insensitive is no longer a runtime-settable parameter, but it was still listed as such

Bug Fixes
- case_insensitive is no longer a runtime-settable parameter, but it was still listed as such
- Fixed a recursive loop bug when abbreviated commands are enabled and it could get stuck in the editor forever
  - Added additional command abbreviations to the "exclude from history" list
- Fixed argparse_example.py and pirate.py examples and transcript_regex.txt transcript
- Fixed a bug in a unit test which occurred under unusual circumstances
Enhancements
- Organized all attributes used to configure the ParserManager into a single location
- Set the default value of abbrev to False (which controls whether or not abbreviated commands are allowed)
  - With good tab completion of command names, using abbreviated commands isn't particularly useful
  - And it can create complications if you are't careful
- Improved implementation of load to use command queue instead of nested inner loop

Open source →

0.7.43 Jul 20173 sources agree

Fixed a couple bugs in interacting with pastebuffer/clipboard on macOS and Linux

Bug fixes
- Fixed a couple bugs in interacting with pastebuffer/clipboard on macOS and Linux
- Fixed a couple bugs in edit and save commands if called when history is empty
- Ability to pipe cmd2 command output to a shell command is now more reliable, particularly on Windows
- Fixed a bug in pyscript command on Windows related to \ being interpreted as an escape
Enhancements
- Ensure that path and shell command tab completion results are alphabetically sorted
- Removed feature for load command to load scripts from URLS
  - It didn't work, there were no unit tests, and it felt out of place
- Removed presence of a default file name and default file extension
  - These also strongly felt out of place
  - load and _relative_load now require a file path
  - edit and save now use a temporary file if a file path isn't provided
- load command has better error checking and reporting
- Clipboard copy and paste functionality is now handled by the pyperclip module
- shell command now supports redirection and piping of output
- Added a lot of unit tests
Other changes
- Removed pause command
- Added a dependency on the pyperclip module

Open source →

0.7.323 Jun 20173 sources agree

Fixed a bug in displaying a span of history items when only an end index is supplied

Bug fixes
- Fixed a bug in displaying a span of history items when only an end index is supplied
- Fixed a bug which caused transcript test failures to display twice
Enhancements
- Added the ability to exclude commands from the help menu (eof included by default)
- Redundant list command removed and features merged into history command
- Added pyscript command which supports tab completion and running Python scripts with arguments
- Improved tab completion of file system paths, command names, and shell commands
  - Thanks to Kevin Van Brunt for all of the help with debugging and testing this
- Changed default value of USE_ARG_LIST to True - this affects the beavhior of all @options commands
  - WARNING: This breaks backwards compatibility, to restore backwards compatibility, add this to the ** **init**()** method in your custom class derived from cmd2.Cmd:
    - cmd2.set_use_arg_list(False)
  - This change improves argument parsing for all new applications
- Refactored code to encapsulate most of the pyparsing logic into a ParserManager class

Open source →

0.7.222 May 20173 sources agree

Added a MANIFEST.ini file to make sure a few extra files get included in the PyPI source distribution

Added a MANIFEST.ini file to make sure a few extra files get included in the PyPI source distribution

Open source →

0.7.122 May 20173 sources agree

- wasn't being treated as a legal character

Bug fixes
- - wasn't being treated as a legal character
- The allow_cli_args attribute wasn't properly disabling parsing of args at invocation when False
- py command wasn't allowing scripts which used cmd function prior to entering an interactive Python session
- Don't throw exception when piping output to a shell command
- Transcript testing now properly calls preloop before and postloop after
- Fixed readline bug related to ANSI color escape codes in the prompt
Added CONTRIBUTING.md and CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md files
Added unicode parsing unit tests and listed unicode support as a feature when using Python 3
Added more examples and improved documentation
- Example for how use cmd2 in a way where it doesn't own the main loop so it can integrate with external event loops
- Example for how to use argparse for parsing command-line args at invocation
- Example for how to use the py command to run Python scripts which use conditional control flow
- Example of how to use regular expressions in a transcript test
Added CmdResult namedtumple for returning and storing results
Added local file system path completion for edit, load, save, and shell commands
Add shell command completion for shell command or ! shortcut
Abbreviated multiline commands are no longer allowed (they never worked correctly anyways)

Open source →

0.7.023 Feb 20173 sources agree

Refactored to use six module for a unified codebase which supports both Python 2 and Python 3

Refactored to use six module for a unified codebase which supports both Python 2 and Python 3
Stabilized on all platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux) and all supported Python versions (2.7, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, PyPy)
Added lots of unit tests and fixed a number of bugs
Improved documentation and moved it to cmd2.readthedocs.io

Open source →

0.6.93 Oct 20163 sources agree

- Support Python 3 input() - Fix subprocess.mswindows bug - Add Python3.6 support - Drop distutils from setup.py

Support Python 3 input()
Fix subprocess.mswindows bug
Add Python3.6 support
Drop distutils from setup.py

Open source →

0.6.89 Dec 20143 sources agree

better editor checking (by Ian Cordascu)

better editor checking (by Ian Cordascu)

Open source →

0.6.721 Sept 2013

Nothing published for this version

0.6.6.114 Aug 20133 sources agree

No changes to code trunk. Generated sdist from Python 2.7 to avoid 2to3 changes being applied to source. ( Issue https://bitbucket.org/catherinedevlin

No changes to code trunk. Generated sdist from Python 2.7 to avoid 2to3 changes being applied to source. ( Issue https://bitbucket.org/catherinedevlin/cmd2/issue/6/packaging-bug)

Open source →

0.6.66 Aug 20133 sources agree

Added fix by bitbucket.org/desaintmartin to silence the editor check. bitbucket.org/catherinedevlin/cmd2/issue/1/silent-editor-check

Added fix by bitbucket.org/desaintmartin to silence the editor check. bitbucket.org/catherinedevlin/cmd2/issue/1/silent-editor-check

Open source →

0.6.5.118 Mar 20133 sources agree

Bugfix for setup.py version check for Python 2.6, contributed by Tomaz Muraus

Bugfix for setup.py version check for Python 2.6, contributed by Tomaz Muraus (https://bitbucket.org/kami)

Open source →

0.6.528 Feb 20133 sources agree

Changed pyparsing requirement for compatibility with Python version (2 vs 3)

Belatedly began a NEWS.txt
Changed pyparsing requirement for compatibility with Python version (2 vs 3)

Open source →

0.6.427 May 2012

Nothing published for this version

0.6.329 Jul 2011

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0.6.29 Nov 2010

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0.6.13 Mar 2010

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0.6.018 Feb 2010

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0.5.58 Aug 2009

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0.5.42 Jun 2009

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0.5.330 Apr 2009

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0.5.23 Apr 2009

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0.5.130 Mar 2009

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0.5.024 Mar 2009

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0.4.819 Mar 2009

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0.4.72 Mar 2009

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0.4.625 Feb 2009

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0.4.528 Jan 2009

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0.4.422 Dec 2008

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0.4.37 Nov 2008

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0.4.25 Nov 2008

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0.4.129 Oct 2008

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0.428 Oct 2008

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0.3.729 Sept 2008

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0.3.64 Sept 2008

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0.3.52 Aug 2008

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0.3.4.12 Jul 2008

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0.3.49 Jun 2008

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0.3.328 May 2008

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0.3.221 May 2008

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0.3.119 May 2008

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0.3.015 May 2008

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0.2.314 May 2008

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0.2.211 Apr 2008

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0.2.13 Mar 2008

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0.226 Feb 2008

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0.13 Jan 2008

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