Hi DEV community! 👋
I spend a lot of time reviewing Python code. I noticed that while formatters (like Black or Ruff) are amazing at fixing styling and whitespaces, they don't fix structural logic flaws.
If you have a deeply nested if/else block (the Arrow Anti-pattern), or a dangerous eval(), standard formatters will just make that bad logic look pretty.
So, I decided to build PyNeat — a CLI tool based on Instagram's LibCST to perform deep structural refactoring.
🚀 What PyNeat Does
PyNeat scans your Python AST in a single pass and automatically refactors anti-patterns. Unlike the built-in ast module, because it uses LibCST, it preserves 100% of your original comments and whitespace.
Currently, the v1.0 MVP fixes:
The Arrow Anti-pattern: Flattens deeply nested if/else using guard clauses.
Dangerous Evals: Safely converts eval() to AST literals.
Empty Excepts: Detects silent except: pass failures.
Mutable Defaults: Fixes the infamous def func(items=[]) memory leak.
Identity Checks: Upgrades == None to is None.
💡 The Roadmap
It is still in its early MVP stage! I've already received some great feedback from Reddit about handling edge cases (like import hoisting), and I'm actively working on a robust pytest suite. The ultimate goal is a Rust rewrite (pyneat-rs) for massive multi-threading performance.
Links:
🐙 GitHub: https://github.com/khanhnam-nathan/Pyneat
📦 PyPI: pip install pyneat-cli
I would love to hear your thoughts! Have you ever struggled with writing structural refactoring tools? Any feedback on the architecture would be deeply appreciated!
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