tabbs 0.2.0

A command line tool for displaying delimiter-separated data as a table in the terminal
tabbs-0.2.0 is not a library.

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tabbs

A command line tool for displaying delimiter-separated data as a table in the terminal.

Features

  • Takes input from stdin or a file
  • Supports specifying column names or using first row as header
  • Customizable delimiter (comma, tab, pipe, etc.)
  • Right-align numeric columns
  • Configurable header and cell colors
  • Easy to use

Installation

To install tabbs, you will need Rust and Cargo installed on your system.

cargo install --path .

Or install from crates.io:

cargo install tabbs

Usage

Pipe delimiter-separated data to tabbs and specify column names with the -c flag:

printf "jack,35,neat\njane,50,cool\nerin,20,nice" | tabbs -c "name,age,text"

Output:

+------+-----+------+
| name | age | text |
+------+-----+------+
| jack | 35  | neat |
| jane | 50  | cool |
| erin | 20  | nice |
+------+-----+------+

Command line options

Option Short Description
--columns -c Column names, separated by the delimiter (required unless --header-row)
--file -f Read input from file instead of stdin
--delimiter -d Field delimiter (default: ,)
--header-row Use the first line of input as column names
--no-header Do not print the header row
--align-numeric Right-align columns that contain only numbers
--header-color Color for the header row
--cell-color Color for cell text
--help -h Print help

Supported colors: black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white, and their bright_ variants.

File input

Read from a file with -f:

tabbs -f data.csv -c "name,age,city"

Header from first row

When your data includes a header line, use --header-row instead of -c:

printf "name,age\njack,35\njane,50" | tabbs --header-row

Right-align numbers

Use --align-numeric to right-align columns where all values are numbers:

printf "name,age,score\nalice,30,95.5\nbob,25,87" | tabbs --header-row --align-numeric

Custom delimiter

Use -d or --delimiter for tab-separated, pipe-separated, or other formats:

# Tab-separated (use $'\t' in bash; column names must use the same delimiter)
printf "alice\t30\nbob\t25" | tabbs -c $'name\tage' -d $'\t'

# Pipe-separated
printf "alice|30\nbob|25" | tabbs -c "name|age" -d "|"

Colors

printf "jack,35,neat\njane,50,cool\nerin,20,nice" | tabbs -c "name,age,text" --header-color blue --cell-color green

Limitations

  • Simple delimiter-separated parsing only; quoted fields (e.g. "Smith, John",42) are not supported
  • Rows with fewer columns than the header are padded with empty cells
  • Rows with more columns than the header are truncated
  • Empty lines in input are skipped
  • Input is read fully into memory (very large files may use significant memory)

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please open an issue or pull request on GitHub.

License

MIT License. See LICENSE for details.