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blocklint

blocklint is a command line utility for finding non-inclusive wording. This project is inspired by Alex.js.

About

If you've used a modern IDE, you know the importance of immediate feedback for compilation errors or even stylistic slip ups. Knowing all variables should be declared or that lines must be less than 80 characters long is good, but adhering to those rules takes a back seat when in the flow of writing code. A linter brings these issues back into your consciousness by highlighting the problematic lines of code. Over time, the enforced style becomes more intuitive but the linter is always there to nudge you if you slip.

We are in the midst of changing attitudes towards words and phrases that are not inclusive. Not only are developers acknowledging the offensive history of terms like "master/slave" and "blacklist/whitelist", but we are taking active steps to remove their usage and replace them with more appropriate language. This tool is not a commentary on inclusion, but rather a utility to detect whatever words you'd like to remove from code.

Alex.js is one option for highlighting offensive language, but it is geared towards text documents such as markdown, misses common constructs in source code and is also overly broad and prone to false positives. Blocklint is built with source code in mind and is more limited in scope.

Requirements and Installation

Blocklint is written in python and uses minimal, standard libraries. It has been tested for python >= 3.7 To install:

pip install blocklint

into an appropriate environment.

Usage

Without any arguments, blocklint will search all files in the current directory for uses of master, slave, blacklist and whitelist:

$ pwd
/path/to/blocklint/blocklint
$ blocklint
/path/to/blocklint/blocklint/main.py:40:60: use of "blacklist"
/path/to/blocklint/blocklint/main.py:40:37: use of "master"
/path/to/blocklint/blocklint/main.py:40:44: use of "slave"
/path/to/blocklint/blocklint/main.py:40:50: use of "whitelist"
/path/to/blocklint/blocklint/main.py:55:53: use of "blacklist"
/path/to/blocklint/blocklint/main.py:55:30: use of "master"
/path/to/blocklint/blocklint/main.py:55:37: use of "slave"
/path/to/blocklint/blocklint/main.py:55:43: use of "whitelist"

Optionally, multiple files and directories can be specified to search. The detected words can be customized through several options; setting any will clear the defaults. Multiple words are specified as comma separated values:

• blocklist: Will match any occurrence of the word, ignoring case and special characters.
• wordlist: Will match the word, ignoring case and special characters but respecting word boundaries.
• exactlist: Will match the word as entered respecting word boundaries.

Only the first match of a word in a line will be returned, but multiple words can match on a single line. Here are some examples:

$ blocklint --blocklist test,asdf <(echo thisTEST will match as will a_S-d:F)
/dev/fd/63:1:29: use of "asdf"
/dev/fd/63:1:5: use of "test"

$ blocklint --wordlist test,asdf <(echo thisTEST will not match but T=E-ST, will)
/dev/fd/63:1:29: use of "test"

$ blocklint --exactlist Test <(echo thisTest, tEST, T-est fail but Test! matches)
/dev/fd/63:1:32: use of "Test"

The -e,--end-pos flag will provide the end position of the match in addition to the start position.

The --stdin flag will take values from stdin instead of a file or directory.

The --skip-files flag takes a comma-or-newline separated list of paths to files that should not be checked by blocklint. This is useful when running blocklint on a large directory.

Configuration

Blocklint supports the standard ini configuration format used by many other linting tools, including flake8.

Command line arguments have highest priority, and override any arguments derived from configuration files. Next highest are local files tox.ini, setup.cfg, and .blocklint. Finally, a global config in ~/.blocklint may be used.

Config files should contain a blocklint section in ini format, for example:

[blocklint]
max_issue_threshold=10
blocklist=test,asdf
end_pos=store_true

Other example blocklists can be found here.

Skipping lines

In addition to skipping entire files with the --skip-files option, single lines can be skipped by including the (regex) phrase blocklint:.*pragma. For example:

def main(blacklist, white_list):  # blocklint: pragma
    for item in blacklist:  # blocklint: some other information pragma
        ...

will pass all checks.

Integrations

The integration directory contains information on using blocklint for:

• ALE
• pre-commit

Don't see the tool you use? Submit a pull request or issue!