tabview - Display tabular data

Nov 3, 2022 · 1 min read · csv data management viewer tui  ·
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tabview is a curses command line CSV and tabular data viewer. The loaded CSV can be viewed interactively. Data in columns can be sorted in various ways, searched, zoomed and copied in the clipboard.

Here a selection of the features listed on the program website:

  • Spreadsheet-like view for easily visualizing tabular data.
  • Vim-like navigation.
  • Toggle persistent header row.
  • Sort ascending or descending by any column.
  • Dynamically change column width and gap.
  • Sort in 'natural order' to improve numeric sorting.
  • Full-text incremental search.
  • 'Enter' to view the full cell contents.
  • Yank cell contents to the clipboard.
  • File can be reloaded in-place if the data changes.

Some considerations

This is at the moment my favourite program to quickly have an overview of the content of a CSV file. Moreover, it is able to load data from the standard input. It thus plays nicely with tools such as csvkit.

As the authors suggest on the website, VisiData seems more powerful and feature-rich, although tabview is perfectly fine for a quick examination of a CSV file.

References