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] [--null-value NULL_VALUES [NULL_VALUES ...]]
[--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]
[--max-precision MAX_PRECISION] [--no-number-ellipsis]
[-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.
--max-precision MAX_PRECISION
The maximum number of decimal places to display. The
remainder will be replaced with ellipsis.
--no-number-ellipsis Disable the ellipsis if --max-precision is exceeded.
-y SNIFF_LIMIT, --snifflimit SNIFF_LIMIT
Limit CSV dialect sniffing to the specified number of
bytes. Specify "0" to disable sniffing entirely, or
"-1" to sniff the entire file.
-I, --no-inference Disable type inference when parsing the input. This
disables the reformatting of values.
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
.
See also: Arguments common to all tools.
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
If a data row contains more cells than the header row, csvlook will error. To fix the header row, use csvclean.
To ignore the extra cells, instead:
csvcut -C "" examples/bad.csv | csvlook
If these rows are at the top of the file (for example, copyright notices), you can skip the rows:
csvlook --skip-lines 1 examples/bad.csv
This error can also occur if csvlook incorrectly deduces (“sniffs”) the CSV format. To disable CSV sniffing, set --snifflimit 0
and then, if necessary, set the --delimiter
and --quotechar
options yourself. Or, set --snifflimit -1
to use the entire file as the sample, instead of the first 1024 bytes.