csvlook¶

Description¶

Renders a CSV to the command line in a Markdown-compatible, fixed-width format:

usage: csvlook [-h] [-d DELIMITER] [-t] [-q QUOTECHAR] [-u {0,1,2,3}] [-b]
               [-p ESCAPECHAR] [-z FIELD_SIZE_LIMIT] [-e ENCODING] [-L LOCALE]
               [-S] [--blanks] [--date-format DATE_FORMAT]
               [--datetime-format DATETIME_FORMAT] [-H] [-K SKIP_LINES] [-v]
               [-l] [--zero] [-V] [--max-rows MAX_ROWS]
               [--max-columns MAX_COLUMNS]
               [--max-column-width MAX_COLUMN_WIDTH] [-y SNIFF_LIMIT] [-I]
               [FILE]

Render a CSV file in the console as a Markdown-compatible, fixed-width table.

positional arguments:
  FILE                  The CSV file to operate on. If omitted, will accept
                        input as piped data via STDIN.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --max-rows MAX_ROWS   The maximum number of rows to display before
                        truncating the data.
  --max-columns MAX_COLUMNS
                        The maximum number of columns to display before
                        truncating the data.
  --max-column-width MAX_COLUMN_WIDTH
                        Truncate all columns to at most this width. The
                        remainder will be replaced with ellipsis.
  -y SNIFF_LIMIT, --snifflimit SNIFF_LIMIT
                        Limit CSV dialect sniffing to the specified number of
                        bytes. Specify "0" to disable sniffing.
  -I, --no-inference    Disable type inference when parsing the input.

If a table is too wide to display properly try piping the output to less -S or truncating it using csvcut.

If the table is too long, try filtering it down with grep or piping the output to less.

Note

The fractional part of a decimal numberal is always truncated. To control this truncation, use --no-inference along with --max-column-width.

Examples¶

Basic use:

csvlook examples/testfixed_converted.csv

This tool is especially useful as a final operation when piping through other tools:

csvcut -c 9,1 examples/realdata/FY09_EDU_Recipients_by_State.csv | csvlook