Ever wondered how you can create a simple table output in bash? You can use the tool column for creating a simple table output.
Column gives you the possibility to indent text accurate to the same level. Pipe output to column -t (maybe configure the delimeter with -s) and see the magic happening.
detailed example
I needed to separate a list of databases and their corresponding size with a pipe symbol: |
Here is a example list.txt:
DB Size_in_MB
foobar 11011.2
barfoo 4582.9
donkey 4220.8
shoryuken 555.9
hadouken 220.0
kong 214.8
super_mario_bros_p 211.1
The whitespaces were tabs. If you just replace them by cat list.txt | sed 's/\t/|/g' you get output like this:
DB|Size_in_MB
foobar|11011.2
barfoo|4582.9
donkey|4220.8
shoryuken|555.9
hadouken|220.0
kong|214.8
super_mario_bros_p|211.1
If you try to add more whitespace with cat list.txt | sed 's/\t/\t|\t/g' you won't be happy either:
DB | Size_in_MB
foobar | 11011.2
barfoo | 4582.9
donkey | 4220.8
shoryuken | 555.9
hadouken | 220.0
kong | 214.8
super_mario_bros_p | 211.1
Solution
You can solve this problem with column. Use cat list.txt | sed 's/\t/,|,/g' | column -s ',' -t. The result looks like this:
DB | Size_in_MB
foobar | 11011.2
barfoo | 4582.9
donkey | 4220.8
shoryuken | 555.9
hadouken | 220.0
kong | 214.8
super_mario_bros_p | 211.1
Posted by Claus-Theodor Riegg to makandra dev (2016-01-20 09:45)