tablizer/tablizer.pod

=head1 NAME

tablizer - Manipulate tabular output of other programs

=head1 SYNOPSIS

    Usage:
      tablizer [regex] [file, ...] [flags]
    
    Flags:
      -c, --columns string     Only show the speficied columns (separated by ,)
      -d, --debug              Enable debugging
      -h, --help               help for tablizer
      -n, --no-numbering       Disable header numbering
      -o, --output string      Output mode - one of: orgtbl, markdown, extended, ascii(default)
      -X, --extended           Enable extended output
      -M, --markdown           Enable markdown table output
      -O, --orgtbl             Enable org-mode table output
      -s, --separator string   Custom field separator
      -v, --version            Print program version


=head1 DESCRIPTION

Many  programs generate  tabular  output.  But  sometimes  you need  to
post-process these tables, you may need  to remove one or more columns
or you may want to filter for  some pattern or you may need the output
in another program and need to  parse it somehow.  Standard unix tools
such as  awk(1), grep(1) or column(1)  may help, but sometimes  it's a
tedious business.

Let's take  the output of  the tool  kubectl.  It contains  cells with
withespace and they do not separate columns by TAB characters. This is
not easy to process.

You can use B<tablizer> to do these and more things.

B<tablizer> analyses the header fiels of a table, registers the column
positions  of  each  header  field  and  separates  columns  by  those
positions.

Without any options it reads its input from C<STDIN>, but you can also
specify a  file as a  parameter. If you want  to reduce the  output by
some   regular   expression,   just    specify   it   as   its   first
parameters. Hence:

   # read from STDIN
   kubectl get pods | tablizer

   # read a file
   tablizer filename

   # search for pattern in a file (works like grep)
   tablizer regex filename

   # search for pattern in STDIN
   kubectl get pods | tablizer regex

The output  looks like the  original one  but every header  field will
have a numer associated with it, e.g.:

   NAME(1) READY(2) STATUS(3) RESTARTS(4) AGE(5)

These numbers denote the column and  you can use them to specify which
columns you want to have in your output:

   kubectl get pods | tablizer -c1,3

You can specify the numbers in any order but output will always follow
the original order.

The numbering can be suppressed by using the B<-n> option.

Finally the  B<-d> option  enables debugging  output which  is mostly
usefull for the developer.

=head2 OUTPUT MODES

There might be cases  when the tabular output of a  program is way too
large  for your  current  terminal but  you still  need  to see  every
column.   In such  cases the  B<-o extended>  or B<-X>  option can  be
usefull which enables I<extended mode>. In this mode, each row will be
printed vertically,  header left,  value right,  aligned by  the field
widths. Here's an example:

    kubectl get pods | ./tablizer -o extended
        NAME: repldepl-7bcd8d5b64-7zq4l  
       READY: 1/1    
      STATUS: Running  
    RESTARTS: 1 (71m ago)  
         AGE: 5h28m

You can  of course  still use  a regex  to reduce  the number  of rows
displayed.

The option B<-o shell>  can be used if the output  has to be processed
by the shell,  it prints variable assignments for each  cell, one line
per row:

    kubectl get pods | ./tablizer -o extended ./tablizer -o shell
    NAME="repldepl-7bcd8d5b64-7zq4l" READY="1/1" STATUS="Running" RESTARTS="9 (47m ago)" AGE="4d23h" 
    NAME="repldepl-7bcd8d5b64-m48n8" READY="1/1" STATUS="Running" RESTARTS="9 (47m ago)" AGE="4d23h" 
    NAME="repldepl-7bcd8d5b64-q2bf4" READY="1/1" STATUS="Running" RESTARTS="9 (47m ago)" AGE="4d23h" 

You can use this in an eval loop.

Beside normal  ascii mode  (the default) and  extended mode  there are
more output modes available: B<orgtbl>  which prints an Emacs org-mode
table and B<markdown> which prints a Markdown table.

=head1 BUGS

In order to report a bug, unexpected behavior, feature requests
or to submit a patch, please open an issue on github:
L<https://github.com/TLINDEN/tablizer/issues>.

=head1 LICENSE

This software is licensed under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE version 3.

Copyright (c) 2022 by Thomas von Dein

This software uses the following GO libraries:

=over 4

=item repr (https://github.com/alecthomas/repr)

Released under the MIT License, Copyright (c) 2016 Alec Thomas

=item cobra (https://github.com/spf13/cobra)

Released under the Apache 2.0 license, Copyright 2013-2022 The Cobra Authors

=back

=head1 AUTHORS

Thomas von Dein B<tom AT vondein DOT org>

=cut