Over engineered helper for Slack trolling

alphabet.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import subprocess

from string import ascii_letters
from optparse import OptionParser

parser = OptionParser()
parser.add_option(
    "-y",
    dest="yellow",
    default=False,
    action="store_true",
    help="Use alphabet-yellow instead of white",
)
parser.add_option(
    "-a",
    dest="alternate",
    default=False,
    action="store_true",
    help="Use alphabet-yellow and alphabet-white alternatingly",
)
opts, args = parser.parse_args()

if opts.alternate:
    color = ["yellow", "white"]
else:
    color = ["yellow"] if opts.yellow else ["white"]
colorstr = ", ".join(set(color))

chars = {
    **{"@": "at", "!": "exclamation", "#": "hash", "?": "question"},
    **{x: x for x in ascii_letters},
}


def write_to_clipboard(output):
    process = subprocess.Popen(
        "pbcopy", env={"LANG": "en_US.UTF-8"}, stdin=subprocess.PIPE
    )
    process.communicate(output.encode("utf-8"))


inputstring = input("string to convert: ") if not args else args.pop()

out = "".join(
    [
        f":alphabet-{color[ind % len(color)]}-{chars[char]}:" if char in chars else char
        for ind, char in enumerate(inputstring)
    ]
)
print(f"\n{out}\n")
try:
    write_to_clipboard(out)
    print(f"Alphabet {colorstr} string written to your clipboard!")
except FileNotFoundError as err:
    pass