8
Is there a convenient command-line csv viewer, possibly a unix tool or a mod of some tools (e.g. vim or python)?
I find it easy to simply edit CSV files by writing it manually (since all you need to do it comma delimit the columns), but is there a way to view it in a slightly nicer UI on the command-line?
vonhogen
Posted 2011-03-29T13:21:08.737
Reputation: 1 949
5
sc is a command-line spreadsheet program that's been around a long time, likely available in your package manager. Here's a Linux Journal intro article to it:
Celsius1414
Posted 2011-03-29T13:21:08.737
Reputation: 84
1sc reads colon-delimited files, not CSV files: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10699?page=0,1 – Nathaniel M. Beaver – 2017-01-03T01:32:57.853
Not so hot on cygwin it seems: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8545813/which-library-defines-these-symbols-nmgetch-kbd-again-initkbd-resetkbd
– user74094 – 2011-12-17T22:55:42.5704
There's a tool, CSVfix, which helps with viewing CSV files.
CSVfix is a command-line stream editor specifically designed to deal with CSV data. With it you can, among other things:
- Convert fixed format, multi-line and DSV files to CSV
- Reorder, remove, split and merge fields
- Convert case, trim leading & trailing spaces
- Search for specific content using regular expressions
- Filter out duplicate data or data on exclusion lists
- Perform sed/perl style editing
- Enrich with data from other sources
- Add sequence numbers and file source information
- Split large CSV files into smaller files based on field contents
- Perform arithmetic calculations on individual fields
- Validate CSV data against a collection of validation rules
- Convert between CSV and fixed format, XML, SQL and DSV
- Summarise CSV data, calculating averages, modes, frequencies etc.
A simple way to view CSV files on the command-line is to pipe the .csv file into the column utility with the column delimiter set as a comma:
column -s, -t yourfile.csv
Gaff
Posted 2011-03-29T13:21:08.737
Reputation: 16 863
1Use column -s, -t yourfile.csv. Whenever you see cat file | command consider command file or command < file first. – RedGrittyBrick – 2011-04-17T07:44:20.863
Yes that's a fair point, I'll edit. – Gaff – 2011-04-17T07:46:02.637
3
It seems like this question overlaps (at least partially) with my similar question on StackOverflow:
The top answer there is currently:
column -s, -t < somefile.csv | less -#2 -N -S
(Please see the link for more details.)
Benjamin Oakes
Posted 2011-03-29T13:21:08.737
Reputation: 2 585
3
The powerful program vim have a plugin for .csv files in CSV Plugin and its screenshot is
shgnInc
Posted 2011-03-29T13:21:08.737
Reputation: 375
2
I know this question is already quite old, but I want to add another tool, which I found very convenient:
tabview (https://github.com/TabViewer/tabview)
The header line of the csv file will always stay at the top and there are many more features.
TabeaKischka
Posted 2011-03-29T13:21:08.737
Reputation: 133
1
emacs csv-nav mode will show the csv file and open single records in a text buffer for you to edit and save back to the original buffer
Prach459
Posted 2011-03-29T13:21:08.737
Reputation: 11
Can you be more specific on how you want the output formatted? CSV's are easily to manipulate with shell tools so there's likely a string of four or five shell commands that can format them any way you like for convenient viewing. – LawrenceC – 2011-03-29T13:41:33.330
Well, more or less like it's shown in Excel. Having the columns aligned and properly spaced with proper underlining, if possible. – vonhogen – 2011-03-29T15:48:07.737