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Black vs Zig fmt

Black

black.readthedocs.io

Zig fmt

ziglang.org

Side by side

FigureBlackZig fmt
Price fromFreeFree
Free planYesYes
Free trial——
Open source——
WindowsYesYes
macOSYesYes
LinuxYesYes
Self-hostedYes—
Plans published11
Spec score · Code Formatting Tools8.7 (#1)7.8 (#16)
Editor integrationsThe documentation describes integrations for editors including PyCharm, Vim, Neovim, Visual Studio Code, and Sublime Text.The release notes cite integrations for Vim and VSCode.
PurposeBlack is an opinionated formatter for Python code that follows PEP 8.`zig fmt` is a tool for formatting Zig source code.

Plans

Black

  • BlackFree

Black pricing →

Zig fmt

  • Zig fmt (included with Zig)Free

Zig fmt pricing →

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.

Visit black.readthedocs.io

Zig fmt

Zig fmt has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.

Visit ziglang.org