csview 0.3.3

A high performance csv viewer with cjk/emoji support.
csview-0.3.3 is not a library.

Features

  • Correctly handles CJK characters and emoji.
  • Small, exquisite and fast (see benchmarks below).
  • Support different styles.
  • Support tsv and custom delimiters.
  • Able to generate markdown table (with --style markdown option).

Usage

$ cat example.csv
Year,Make,Model,Description,Price
1997,Ford,E350,"ac, abs, moon",3000.00
1999,Chevy,"Venture ""Extended Edition""","",4900.00
1999,Chevy,"Venture ""Extended Edition, Very Large""",,5000.00
1996,Jeep,Grand Cherokee,"MUST SELL!
air, moon roof, loaded",4799.00

$ csview example.csv
+------+-------+----------------------------------------+------------------------+---------+
| Year | Make  | Model                                  | Description            | Price   |
+------+-------+----------------------------------------+------------------------+---------+
| 1997 | Ford  | E350                                   | ac, abs, moon          | 3000.00 |
| 1999 | Chevy | Venture "Extended Edition"             |                        | 4900.00 |
| 1999 | Chevy | Venture "Extended Edition, Very Large" |                        | 5000.00 |
| 1996 | Jeep  | Grand Cherokee                         | MUST SELL!             | 4799.00 |
|      |       |                                        | air, moon roof, loaded |         |
+------+-------+----------------------------------------+------------------------+---------+

$ head -n10 /etc/passwd | csview --no-headers -d:
+------------------------+---+-------+-------+----------------------------+-----------------+
| root                   | x | 0     | 0     |                            | /root           |
| bin                    | x | 1     | 1     |                            | /               |
| daemon                 | x | 2     | 2     |                            | /               |
| mail                   | x | 8     | 12    |                            | /var/spool/mail |
| ftp                    | x | 14    | 11    |                            | /srv/ftp        |
| http                   | x | 33    | 33    |                            | /srv/http       |
| nobody                 | x | 65534 | 65534 | Nobody                     | /               |
| dbus                   | x | 81    | 81    | System Message Bus         | /               |
| systemd-journal-remote | x | 982   | 982   | systemd Journal Remote     | /               |
| systemd-network        | x | 981   | 981   | systemd Network Management | /               |
+------------------------+---+-------+-------+----------------------------+-----------------+

Run csview --help to view detailed usage.

Benchmark

Compared with csvlook provided by csvkit:

Benchmark #1: csvlook sample.csv
  Time (mean ± σ):      4.010 s ±  0.100 s    [User: 3.945 s, System: 0.051 s]
  Range (min … max):    3.911 s …  4.249 s    10 runs

Benchmark #2: csview sample.csv
  Time (mean ± σ):      46.5 ms ±   2.3 ms    [User: 39.7 ms, System: 6.5 ms]
  Range (min … max):    44.0 ms …  59.4 ms    59 runs

Summary
  'csview sample.csv' ran
   86.32 ± 4.83 times faster than 'csvlook sample.csv'
Benchmark #1: csvlook action.csv
  Time (mean ± σ):     316.5 ms ±   5.2 ms    [User: 284.8 ms, System: 35.0 ms]
  Range (min … max):   309.3 ms … 326.2 ms    10 runs

Benchmark #2: csview action.csv
  Time (mean ± σ):       0.7 ms ±   0.2 ms    [User: 0.8 ms, System: 0.7 ms]
  Range (min … max):     0.4 ms …   1.6 ms    933 runs

Summary
  'csview action.csv' ran
  461.25 ± 109.34 times faster than 'csvlook action.csv'

F.A.Q.


We already have xsv, why not contribute to it but build a new tool?

xsv is an awesome csv tookit. It's aimed for analyzing and manipulating csv data. csview is designed for formatting and viewing. Their relationship is like awk and column.

The author of xsv may have the similar views with me: https://github.com/BurntSushi/xsv/issues/156


Things look weird if the width of table is more than the width of terminal window.

Use pager less with -S option: csview a.csv | less -S so you can scroll screen horizontally. Or use xsv to filter out the columns you don't care then piped to csview.


I encountered UTF-8 related errors, how to solve it?

The file may use a non-UTF8 encoding. You can check the file encoding using file command:

$ file -i a.csv
a.csv: application/csv; charset=iso-8859-1

And then convert it to utf8:

$ iconv -f iso-8859-1 -t UTF8//TRANSLIT a.csv -o b.csv
$ csview b.csv

Or do it in place:

$ iconv -f iso-8859-1 -t UTF8//TRANSLIT a.csv | csview

Credits

License

csview is distributed under the terms of both the MIT License and the Apache License 2.0.

See the LICENSE-APACHE and LICENSE-MIT files for license details.