table − format simple tables
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table |
[−R] [−acdhp] [−l length] [−w width] [−t separator] [−i indent] [−H num_headerlines] [−O formatline] [−I insertline] [−A appendline] file ... |
table is intended for formatting simple .csv and similarly structured data into a human-readable tables suitable for displaying on alphanumeric terminals. It is designed to overcome some of the limitations of column -t while less complex than full processing by troff and tbl. At the same time, the roff mode of table allows to format a subset of tbl tables in a somewhat simplified manner. The output can be suitable for paginating via more or less, and can utilize ANSI escape sequences for highlighting and coloring the output.
The command line is parsed according to the usual UNIX convention. Whitespace is required between a command-line option and its argument.
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−a |
Renders font and color changes using ANSI escape sequences. To display them properly in e. g. less, an appropriate option (i. e. −R for less) is required. The default is to do no font and color rendering. |
−A append_line
Appends the append_line after the data contained in files. This option can be used multiple times to insert multiple lines, and is ignored in roff mode.
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−c |
Center the table to the terminal width. In roff mode, this option is ignored, use the center global option within the table specification instead. | ||
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−d |
Renders font changes using the backspace overstriking recognized by pagers like more or less. The default is to do no font rendering. |
−O format_line
Adds one format specification line, with format specifiers separated by whitespace, or by the , (comma) character, or by the character defined by the −t option (to avoid the need to quote the argument within the shell). There can be multiple -O options, each specifying the format for one data input line, the last one being used for the rest of the table. Only a subset of tbl key characters is supported:
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l |
Left-justify the field content within the column. | ||
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c |
Center the field content within the column. | ||
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r |
Right-justify the field content within the column. | ||
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n |
Numerically justify the field content within the column: The field content is expected to be a decimal number, and the dots (or commas) within the number are aligned vertically. More than one decimal separator is not supported. |
The column specifiers are fairly limited, only the following being recognized by table:
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B |
Renders the field in bold font. | ||
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I |
Renders the field in italic font, if the output device supports it, or underlined, if the output device supports underlining instead of italicizing text. | ||
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U |
Renders the field underlined. This is table extension. | ||
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O |
Renders the field striked over, if the output device supports it. This is table extension. | ||
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@N |
Renders the field text using ANSI color N. This is table extension. | ||
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@NM |
Renders the field text using ANSI color N, and the field background using ANSI color M. This is table extension. |
This option is ignored in roff mode.
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−g |
Guess the format from the table data. Note: This option is not yet implemented. | ||
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−h |
Print short synopsis message. |
−H num_headerlines
Specifies the number of data lines considered to be a table header. If pagination is used, these lines are printed at the top of each page.
This option is ignored in roff mode. In roff mode, use the .TS H and .TH macros/directives instead.
−i indent
Sets the output table indent to indent characters. Mutually exclusive with −c. This option is ignored in roff mode.
−I insert_line
Inserts (prepends) the insert_line before the data contained in files. This option can be used multiple times to insert multiple lines, and is ignored in roff mode.
−l length
Sets the output page length in lines. Note that when feeding the output into e. g. more(1) or less(1) one line is spent by the pager itself, therefore the page length must be set to one line less than the actual terminal window length. The default is the LINES environment variable, or 24, if not set.
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−p |
Paginate. Table header is printed on top of each page, and empty lines are supplied on last page to fill the page. Be careful when piping the output to a pager like more or less, as they use the last line of the terminal for displaying a message, and therefore the length length supplied via −l or LINES needs to be one line less than the actual terminal size. | ||
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−R |
Roff mode. See tbl(1) for reference on Troff tables, but beware of the limitations: |
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Only tab(c), center, and box global options are recognized | |||
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• |
Only l, c, r, and n format keys are supported | ||
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Only very limited format specifiers are recognized | ||
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ANSI color support using the @ key is a table extension. |
Also note that −A, −c, −O, −H, −i, −I, and −t options are ignored in roff mode.
−t separator
Sets the input field separator to separator similarly to the tab(separator) global option in tbl. This option is ignored in roff mode, use the tab(separator) instead. The default is to use the horizontal tab (ASCII HT, 9 dec, 011 oct, 09 hex). Note that using a character that has special meaning in regular expressions can cause weird effect and will probably cause table to crash.
−w width
Sets the output page page in characters. The default is the COLUMNS environment variable, or 80, if not set.
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LINES |
The number of output page lines, unless -l is specified. |
COLUMNS
The number of output page lines, unless -w is specified.
The table in csv format contains four columns, the first one being left-justified, the other three being numbers. The headings are supplied using the −I option, are set in bold, the headings for the numeric columns being centered. There is a horizontal line between the headings and the body of the table, and at the end of the table. This output is suitable for displaying on a terminal:
table -t , -a
-O lB,cB,cB,cB -O l,n,n,n \
-I Item,Height,Width,Length -I _ -A _ \
file.csv
The same table being paginated and fed to a printer (the page dimensions being 65 lines and 80 characters). Note that no bold rendering is done here:
table -t , -O
lB,cB,cB,cB -O l,n,n,n -l 65 -w 80 -P \
-I Item,Height,Width,Length -I _ -A _ \
file.csv | lpr -P myprinter
The table intended for the tbl preprocessor of troff is paginated and fed into the less pager. All the formating specifications, including the headers, are contained within the file. Please note that when paged into e. g. less, the terminal length needs to be compensated to paginate properly:
eval $(resize)
table -Racp -w $COLUMNS -l $(expr $LINES - 1) file.troff \ |
less -R
Keep in mind that at the current stage of development, there is almost no diagnostics and error recovery, and that table may silently fail, crash, or produce incorrect output when invalid input or options are supplied.
This is table version 0.1.
table is being written (and maintained) by Martin Cernohorsky. At this stage, table is to be considered to be a work in progress. Please note that option names and functionality may change in future versions of table.
column(1), tbl(1), roff(7)