Pretty printing of large datashapes

[mrocklin]

Large nested datashapes can be troublesome for humans to parse if printed linearly. Consider the following data

In [11]: x
Out[11]: 
nd.array([],
         type="0 * {actor : {avatar_url : string, gravatar_id : string, id : int64, 
login : string, url : string}, created_at : datetime, id : int64, payload : {before : 
string, commits : 1 * {author : {email : string, name : string}, distinct : bool, 
message : string, sha : string, url : string}, distinct_size : int64, head : string, 
push_id : int64, ref : string, size : int64}, public : bool, repo : {id : int64, name : 
string, url : string}, type : string}")

It's really not clear what's going on here. If we print things in a nested way then the situation becomes more clear.

{
  actor: {
    avatar_url: string,
    gravatar_id: string,
    id: int64,
    login: string,
    url: string
    },
  created_at: datetime,
  id: int64,
  payload: {
    before: string,
    commits: 1 * {
      author: {email: string, name: string},
      distinct: bool,
      message: string,
      sha: string,
      url: string
      },
    distinct_size: int64,
    head: string,
    push_id: int64,
    ref: string,
    size: int64
    },
  public: bool,
  repo: {id: int64, name: string, url: string},
  type: string
  }

[mrocklin]

datashape.coretypes:pprint() may be of some value here when designing a solution for dynd.

https://github.com/blaze/datashape/blob/master/datashape/coretypes.py#L1238-L1317

[izaid]

Thanks, this clearly needs to happen, and the datashape link is great. Will let you know when it has.

[mwiebe]

I think the datashape formatting in https://github.com/libdynd/libdynd/blob/master/include/dynd/types/datashape_formatter.hpp with multiline=true might be pretty close to this already.