tb - manipulation tool for table: CSV, TSV, etc.

tb provides a command and a library for manipulating tables: Unix filter like operations (grep, sort, cat, cut, ls, etc.), SQL like operations (join, group, etc.), and more.

Example

There is a CSV file for programming languages and their birth year in sample/ directory in tb package.

% head sample/langs.csv
language,year
FORTRAN,1955
LISP,1958
COBOL,1959
ALGOL 58,1958
APL,1962
Simula,1962
SNOBOL,1962
BASIC,1964
PL/I,1964

“tb” command has many subcommands. “sort” subcommand sort a CSV file. You don’t need to care header: header is retained as is.

% tb sort sample/langs.csv|head
language,year
ALGOL 58,1958
APL,1962
Ada,1983
B,1969
BASIC,1964
BCPL,1967
C,1972
C#,2001
C++,1980

“sort” subcommand takes -f option to specify a field to sort. You don’t need to count the position of the field. Also, the comparison method used in tb is smart to sort numbers correctly.

% tb sort -f year sample/langs.csv|head
language,year
FORTRAN,1955
LISP,1958
ALGOL 58,1958
COBOL,1959
APL,1962
SNOBOL,1962
Simula,1962
BASIC,1964
PL/I,1964

“grep” subcommand search CSV file.

% tb grep R sample/langs.csv
language,year
FORTRAN,1955
Ruby,1993

“grep” subcommand takes -f with field name and -v to show non-matching rows. You don’t need to care field separators (comma) to match. Following example searches languages which name contains a non-alphabet character.

% tb grep -vf language '\A[A-Za-z]*\z' sample/langs.csv |cat
language,year
ALGOL 58,1958
PL/I,1964
C++,1980
Objective-C,1983
Common Lisp,1984
Visual Basic,1991
C#,2001
F#,2002

“grep” subcommand can take Ruby expression, instead of a regexp.

% tb grep --ruby '(1990..1999).include?(_["year"].to_i)' sample/langs.csv
language,year
Haskell,1990
Python,1991
Visual Basic,1991
Ruby,1993
Lua,1993
CLOS,1994
Java,1995
Delphi,1995
JavaScript,1995
PHP,1995
D,1999

“cut” subcommand extract one or more fields. This is similar to “cut” command of Unix and projection of relational algebra.

% tb cut language sample/langs.csv |head
language
FORTRAN
LISP
COBOL
ALGOL 58
APL
Simula
SNOBOL
BASIC
PL/I

“group” subcommand groups rows for specified field. -a option specifies aggregation expression to aggregate the grouped rows.

% tb group year -a count -a 'values(language)' sample/langs.csv |head
year,count,values(language)
1955,1,FORTRAN
1958,2,"LISP,ALGOL 58"
1959,1,COBOL
1962,3,"APL,Simula,SNOBOL"
1964,2,"BASIC,PL/I"
1967,1,BCPL
1968,1,Logo
1969,1,B
1970,2,"Pascal,Forth"

There are more subcommands. “help” subcommand shows list of subcommand.

% tb help
Usage:
  tb help [OPTS] [SUBCOMMAND]
  tb csv [OPTS] [TABLE]
  tb tsv [OPTS] [TABLE]
  tb json [OPTS] [TABLE]
  tb yaml [OPTS] [TABLE]
  tb pp [OPTS] [TABLE]
  tb grep [OPTS] REGEXP [TABLE]
  tb gsub [OPTS] REGEXP STRING [TABLE]
  tb sort [OPTS] [TABLE]
  tb cut [OPTS] FIELD,... [TABLE]
  tb rename [OPTS] SRC,DST,... [TABLE]
  tb newfield [OPTS] FIELD RUBY-EXP [TABLE]
  tb cat [OPTS] [TABLE ...]
  tb join [OPTS] [TABLE ...]
  tb group [OPTS] KEY-FIELD1,... [TABLE]
  tb cross [OPTS] HKEY-FIELD1,... VKEY-FIELD1,... [TABLE]
  tb shape [OPTS] [TABLE ...]
  tb mheader [OPTS] [TABLE]
  tb crop [OPTS] [TABLE]

Command Line Tool

tb command has many subcommands.

help     : show help message of tb command.
csv      : convert a table to CSV (Comma Separated Value).
tsv      : convert a table to TSV (Tab Separated Value).
json     : convert a table to JSON (JavaScript Object Notation).
yaml     : convert a table to YAML (YAML Ain't a Markup Language).
pp       : convert a table to pretty printed format.
grep     : search rows using regexp or ruby expression.
gsub     : substitute cells.
sort     : sort rows.
cut      : select columns.
rename   : rename field names.
newfield : add a field.
cat      : concatenate tables vertically.
join     : concatenate tables horizontally as left/right/full natural join.
group    : group and aggregate rows.
cross    : create a contingency table.
shape    : show table size.
mheader  : collapse multi rows header.
crop     : extract rectangle in a table.

Install

gem install tb

Author

Tanaka Akira <[email protected]>

License

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

(1) Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this

list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

(2) Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice,

this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation
and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

(3) The name of the author may not be used to endorse or promote products

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