Black vs shfmt
Black
black.readthedocs.ioshfmt
github.comSide by side
| Figure | Black | shfmt |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Code Formatting Tools | 8.7 (#1) | 7.6 (#23) |
| Docker | Official Black Docker images are available, with tags for releases and prereleases. | Docker release tags include versioned releases, a v3 stable tag, and a latest development tag; images contain shfmt and have Alpine variants. |
| Editor integrations | The documentation describes integrations for editors including PyCharm, Vim, Neovim, Visual Studio Code, and Sublime Text. | Listed integrations include JetBrains shell plugins, micro, NeoVim, VS Code, Emacs, and Trunk. |
| Formatting | Black reformats whole files in place and uses a default line length of 88 characters. | shfmt uses a consistent default style and offers flags for indentation, case indentation, binary operator placement, redirect spacing, block placement, and minification. |
| Purpose | Black is an opinionated formatter for Python code that follows PEP 8. | shfmt formats shell programs and is included in a shell parser, formatter, and interpreter project. |
Plans
In their own words
Black
Black is a free, MIT-licensed formatter for Python code that follows PEP 8. It reformats whole files in place and uses a default line length of 88 characters. Its limited style choices are intended to keep code consistent across projects; indentation style cannot be configured. After formatting, Black checks whether the abstract syntax tree remains effectively equivalent and raises an error if the check fails. Install it with pip; it requires Python 3.10 or newer. The documentation lists editor integrations including Emacs, PyCharm, IntelliJ IDEA, Vim, Neovim, Visual Studio Code and Sublime Text, as well as GitHub Actions and doctest workflows. Notebook formatting is available with the jupyter extra, though Black skips cells containing certain magics or invalid syntax. It also includes blackd, an HTTP server that binds to localhost by default. Black is primarily a command-line tool and does not provide a Python interface. Stable releases preserve formatting within the same calendar year when the options match.