https://til.simonwillison.net/python/stdlib-cli-tools Simon Willison's TILs CLI tools hidden in the Python standard library Seth Michael Larson pointed out that the Python gzip module can be used as a CLI tool like this: python -m gzip --decompress pypi.db.gz This is a neat Python feature: modules with a if __name__ == "__main__": block that are available on Python's standard import path can be executed from the terminal using python -m name_of_module. Seth pointed out this is useful if you are on Windows and don't have the gzip utility installed. This made me wonder: what other little tools are lurking in the Python standard library, available on any computer with a working Python installation? Finding them with ripgrep I decided to take a sniff around the standard library and see what I can find. Jim Crist-Harif pointed me to python -m site, which outputs useful information about your installation: python3.11 -m site sys.path = [ '/opt/homebrew/Cellar/python@3.11/3.11.4_1/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.11/lib/python3.11', '/opt/homebrew/Cellar/python@3.11/3.11.4_1/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.11/lib/python311.zip', '/opt/homebrew/Cellar/python@3.11/3.11.4_1/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.11/lib/python3.11/lib-dynload', '/opt/homebrew/lib/python3.11/site-packages', '/opt/homebrew/opt/python@3.11/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.11/lib/python3.11/site-packages', ] USER_BASE: '/Users/simon/Library/Python/3.11' (doesn't exist) USER_SITE: '/Users/simon/Library/Python/3.11/lib/python/site-packages' (doesn't exist) ENABLE_USER_SITE: True This showed me that the standard library itself for my Homebrew installation of Python 3.11 is in /opt/homebrew/Cellar/python@3.11/ 3.11.4_1/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.11/lib/python3.11. So I switched there and used ripgrep to find likely packages: cd /opt/homebrew/Cellar/python@3.11/3.11.4_1/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.11/lib/python3.11 Then ran rg: rg 'if __name__ =' -l | grep -v 'test/' \ | grep -v 'tests/' | grep -v idlelib | grep -v turtledemo The -l option causes ripgrep to list matching files without showing the context of the match. I built up those grep -v exclusions over a few iterations - idlelib/ and turtledemo/ have a bunch of matches that I wasn't interested in. Here's the result: tabnanny.py pyclbr.py netrc.py heapq.py fileinput.py site.py telnetlib.py smtplib.py timeit.py __hello__.py aifc.py json/tool.py asyncio/__main__.py runpy.py mailcap.py tokenize.py smtpd.py sysconfig.py tarfile.py lib2to3/pgen2/tokenize.py lib2to3/pgen2/driver.py lib2to3/pgen2/literals.py xmlrpc/server.py xmlrpc/client.py getopt.py dbm/__init__.py doctest.py pickle.py imaplib.py compileall.py shlex.py ast.py venv/__init__.py py_compile.py ensurepip/__main__.py ensurepip/_uninstall.py http/server.py pickletools.py poplib.py quopri.py calendar.py pprint.py symtable.py pstats.py inspect.py pdb.py platform.py wsgiref/simple_server.py random.py ftplib.py mimetypes.py turtle.py tkinter/dialog.py xml/sax/expatreader.py tkinter/colorchooser.py tkinter/dnd.py tkinter/filedialog.py tkinter/messagebox.py tkinter/simpledialog.py tkinter/font.py tkinter/scrolledtext.py xml/sax/xmlreader.py tkinter/__init__.py code.py difflib.py pydoc.py uu.py imghdr.py filecmp.py profile.py cgi.py codecs.py modulefinder.py __phello__/__init__.py __phello__/spam.py multiprocessing/spawn.py textwrap.py base64.py curses/textpad.py curses/has_key.py zipapp.py cProfile.py dis.py webbrowser.py nntplib.py sndhdr.py gzip.py ctypes/util.py zipfile.py encodings/rot_13.py distutils/fancy_getopt.py That's a lot of neat little tools! I haven't explored my way through all of them yet, but running python -m module_name usually outputs something useful, and adding -h frequently provides help. A few highlights Here are a few of the commands I've figured out so far. http.server To run a localhost webserver on port 8000, serving the content of the current directory: python -m http.server This takes an optional port. To change port, do this: python -m http.server 8001 Pass -h for more options. base64 python3.11 -m base64 -h usage: .../base64.py [-h|-d|-e|-u|-t] [file|-] -h: print this help message and exit -d, -u: decode -e: encode (default) -t: encode and decode string 'Aladdin:open sesame' asyncio This provides a Python console with top-level await: python -m asyncio asyncio REPL 3.11.4 (main, Jun 20 2023, 17:23:00) [Clang 14.0.3 (clang-1403.0.22.14.1)] on darwin Use "await" directly instead of "asyncio.run()". Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import asyncio >>> import httpx >>> async with httpx.AsyncClient() as client: ... r = await client.get('https://www.example.com/') ... >>> r.text[:50] '\n\n\n