Make hx a great python-cli replacement

[Jarrlist]

At work and at home if often open python in the terminal to test and calculate thing quickly.

Often these "scripts" become longer then expected, and even tho python-cli has improved a lot recently, I would much rather use something like helix to create my small script.

It is possible to do this:
hx /tmp/calc.py
and then in helix, I can use
:sh python /tmp/calc.py
or
:| python /tmp/calc.py
To execute the script, and by placing this thing in /tmp, it will be cleaned up eventually, since I do not want to save these quick scripts.

Amazing!
But, I think even more friction could be reduced here. For one helix does not remember commands in between sessions, so the whole command needs to be typed out. Helix can not find aliases defined in my bashrc. Etc.

Has Anyone else found a more convenient way to do things like this?

I do not know the best way to solve it really, but if there were some way to configure Helix so I could do something like
hx --tmp // Creates a file with some random name the folder you have specified in you configuration
:run-current // Runs the file you are currently in
Then there is some other setting, where i can specify "python", so it knows what command to use, and that the tmp file should end with .py. Others might use R, matlab, scilab, etc.

Just an Idea

[a3lem]

I think you could accomplish what you're describing with some Helix builtins and a few bash aliases.

Instead of typing out the whole command, check out Helix command %{expansions}. The buffer_name expansion should get you the path to the current buffer. Bind the command to a key sequence, e.g. - x (I keep my custom keybinds behind a - (dash) prefix).

hx --tmp is a cool idea, but you can get there with existing bash utilities, e.g.hx $(mktemp).

Couple of other thoughts:

• You may be better served by an 'evaluate chunk in REPL' workflow, where you send selections of the script to a REPL in a separate terminal pane for execution. I created replink for this use case, imitating the core fuctionality of plugins like vim-slime.

• If Python scripting is your main way of getting stuff done, you might also like Xonsh shell. It turns Python into a terminal shell. Haven't used it much, but pretty neat.

• In combination with uv, PEP 723 is a great way to write self-contained Python scripts with external dependencies. Doesn't work with the LSP though, unfortunately.