Generating Names¶

As demonstrated in the Getting Started section, generating a names using Namerer is as simple as using the generate command, for example:

$ namerer generate

You can control what Namerer generates by providing a template as an argument to the generate command. For example:

$ namerer generate "????"

This would generate a simple four character output string, for example:

yjrq

By default Namerer generates a single name, but you can use the --count option to generate more, for example:

$ namerer generate --count 5

This would generate something like the following output:

fkeyshtt
ytgebziv
kvitnilx
cvmmwvhz
tfsinukm

You can find out more about the various name generation command-line options in the Command-line Options section. The real power of Namerer however comes from the templates that you can provide.

Templates¶

A template is a string that you pass into the Namerer generate command which controls the shape of the name that is generated. Namerer provides a shortcut syntax for simple alpha and numeric which you can read about in the Basic Templates section which expands into a JavaScript-powered function syntax that you can read about in the Template Functions section.

Command-line Options¶

You can display the list of command-line options for the generate command by adding a --help option to the command, for example:

$ namerer generate --help

  Usage: generate [options] [template]

  Options:

        -h, --help                 output usage information
        -a, --alphabet [alphabet]  Selection of letters to generate from.
        -n, --numbers [numbers]    Seletion of numbers to generate from.
        -c, --count [count]        Number of names to generate.

The --alphabet or -a option takes a list of characters and uses them to constrain which characters can be used when replacing a ? token or [alpha()] function in the template string. For example, take the following command and its result:

$ namerer generate --alphabet abc "????"
acba

The --numeric or -n option works the same way, but instead controls what digits can be injected when the # token or [numeric()] function are used in the template string. For example you might want to append some digits to a product name but avoid what some cultures might consider to be unlucky numbers, for example:

$ namerer generate --numbers 0235789 "cafe ###"
cafe 203

Finally the --count or -c option takes a numeric value and controls how many instances of a particular template you want to generate:

$ namerer generate --count 5 "???###"
vyo148
xyx152
sqp102
apt577
njz132

That can be very useful when you want to generate some sample data, or just a selection of names to consider in one pass.