Structured text tools

The following is a list of text-based file formats and command line tools for manipulating each.

Contents

• DSV
• XML, HTML
• JSON
• YAML, TOML
• INI
• Configuration files
• Bonus round: CLIs for single-file databases
• License
• Disclosure

DSV

Delimiter-separated values, including CSV, TSV, etc.

Awk

Awk is a POSIX-standard command line tool and programming language for processing DSV data. If you use Linux, macOS or a BSD, you almost certainly have it installed. See below for Windows.

• If you already know how to program, the nawk man page is a great way to learn Awk quickly. What you learn from it will apply to other implementations on different platforms. Read it first if you feel overwhelmed by the sheer size of the GNU Awk manual.
• Awk.info archive — an extensive resource on Awk.
• AWK Vs NAWK Vs GAWK — a comparison of implementations' features.
• busybox-w32 includes a full implementation of POSIX Awk and other tools like sed in a single Windows executable.

POSIX commands

Name	Description
cut	Select portions of each line in one or several files. Can work with delimiter-separated fields. (Manual: man 1 cut on your system, GNU, FreeBSD.)
join	Join the lines from two files on a common field. (Manual: man 1 join, GNU, FreeBSD.)
paste	Combine several consecutive lines in a text file into one. (Manual: man 1 paste, GNU, FreeBSD.)
sort	Sort lines by key fields. (Manual: man 1 sort, GNU, FreeBSD.)
uniq	Find or remove repeated lines. (Manual: man 1 uniq, GNU, FreeBSD.)

Other tools

Name and link	Description
GNU datamash	Perform statistical operations on text input.
Miller	sed, awk, cut, join and sort for name-indexed data such as CSV and tabular JSON.
rows	A Python library with a CLI. Convert between a number of file formats for tabular data: CSV, XLS, XLSX, ODS, and others. Query the data (via SQLite). Combine tables. Generate schemas.
tab	A non-Turing-complete statically typed programming language for data processing. An alternative to Awk.
eBay's TSV utilities	Filter, summarize, join, and perform other operations on TSV files. Written in D.
xsv	Index, slice, analyze, split, and join CSV files.

SQL-based utilities

Name and link	Programming language and database engine	Features	Usage link	License
csvkit	Python, SQLite 3	Use header row for column names. Custom input and output encoding. Custom input field separator. Custom output field separator. Custom output formatting. CSV JOINs. Python module. Excel and JSON to CSV. CSV to JSON. SQL queries for CSV.	Usage	MIT
q	Python, SQLite 3	Use header row for column names. Custom input and output encoding. Gzipped input. Custom input field separator (string literal). Custom output field separator. Custom output formatting. Table JOINs. Python module.	Usage	GNU GPLv3
rows	Python, SQLite 3	See the Other tools section.	Usage	GNU LGPLv3
Sqawk	Tcl, SQLite 3	Use header row for column names. Custom input field separator (regexp, per-file). Custom input record delimiter (regexp, per-file). Custom output field separator. Custom output record separator. Custom table names. Merge selected columns into one. Skip columns. ASCII/Unicode table output, CSV input and output. JSON output. Keep SQLite file. Tcl input and output. Table JOINs.	Usage	MIT
sqawk	C, SQLite 3	Use header row for column names. Column name aliases. Can skip lines until a regexp matches. Custom input field separator (string literal, per-file). Keep SQLite file. Show generated SQL. Table JOINs.	Usage	?
Squawk	Python, custom SQL interpreter	Access log and CSV input. JSON and CSV output. Python code generation.	—	Three-clause BSD
termsql	Python, SQLite 3	Use header rows for column names. Custom field separator (regexp). Custom record separator (string literal). Lines as columns. Skip a given number of lines and the beginning and at the end. Merge selected columns into one. HTML, CSV, SQL, and Tcl output.	Manual	MIT
trdsql	Go, MySQL/PostgreSQL/SQLite 3	Use header row for column names. Custom field separator (string literal). Table JOINs. CSV, LTSV, and JSON input. CSV, LTSV, JSON, ASCII table, Markdown output.	Usage	MIT
textql	Go, SQLite 3	Use header rows for column names. Keep SQLite file. Custom input field separator (string literal).	Usage	MIT

XML, HTML

Name and link	Description
pup	Query HTML pages with CSS selectors. Static binaries available for releases. Inspired by jq.
Saxon	Query XML and HTML data with XPath. Documentation.
Temme	Query HTML with CSS-like selectors to extract JSON. Temme extends CSS selectors with value capture patterns.
tq	Query HTML with CSS selectors.
Xidel	Query or modify XML and HTML pages with XPath, XQuery 3, and CSS selectors.
xml2	Convert XML and HTML to and from flat, greppable lists of "path=value" statements. Source code mirror.
XMLStarlet	Query, modify, and validate XML documents.

See also: Grep and Sed Equivalent for XML Command Line Processing on StackOverflow.

JSON

Name and link	Description
fx	Run arbitrary JavaScript on JSON input. Standalone binaries available.
gron	Convert JSON to and from flat, greppable lists of "path=value" statements.
jl	Query and manipulate JSON using a tiny functional language.
jo	Create JSON objects from the shell.
jp	JMESPath
jq	Create and manipulate JSON with a functional (as in "functional programming") DSL. Can convert JSON to other formats.
jshon	Create and manipulate JSON using getopt-style command-line options.
json2	Convert JSON to and from flat, greppable lists of "path=value" statements. Modeled after xml2.
jsonaxe	Create and manipulate JSON with a Python-based DSL. Inspired by jq.
json	Run arbitrary JavaScript on JSON input.
json-table	Convert nested JSON into CSV or TSV for processing in the shell.
json.tool (Python 3 docs)	Validate and pretty-print JSON. This module is part of the standard library of Python 2/3 and is likely to be available wherever Python is installed.
jsonwatch	Track changes in JSON data from the command line. Works like watch -d.
lobar	Explore JSON interactively or process it in batch with a wrapper for lodash.chain(). An alternative to jq with a JavaScript syntax.
rq	Create and manipulate JSON with a DSL inspired by Rust, C and JavaScript. Similar to jq. Supports JSON, YAML and TOML as well as binary formats like Apache Avro and MessagePack.
validjson	Validate or pretty-print JSON.

YAML, TOML

With a format converter like Remarshal (below) you can use JSON tools to process YAML and TOML, but make sure you do not lose data in the conversion.

Name and link	Description
Remarshal	Convert between YAML, TOML, and JSON. Validate or pretty-print each of the three formats.
rq	See the JSON section.
shyaml	Query YAML. Can output null-terminated strings for use in shell scripts.
validtoml	Validate TOML.
validyaml	Validate or pretty-print YAML.

INI

Name and link	Platform	License	Description
crudini	Any with Python 2.x	GNU GPLv2	Set and remove properties in INI files. Retrieve properties as shell script commands to set the corresponding variables. Outputs updated INI data or changes files in place.
IniFile (DOS version)	Windows (x86, x86-64), MS-DOS	Closed-source freeware	Set and remove properties in INI files. Retrieve properties as a list of batch file set commands to set the corresponding variables. Changes files in place.
initool	Windows, Linux, FreeBSD	MIT	Set and remove properties in INI files and check for their existence. Retrieve properties' values as plain text. Outputs updated INI data.

Configuration files

Name and link	Description
Augeas	Query and modify a number of file formats. Not all of the formats are equally well supported by Augeas and for some only a limited subset of all valid files can be parsed.
Elektra	Query and modify configuration files. Shares Augeas' limitations when it comes to application-specific configuration files (it uses the same lenses), but has better support for generic formats such as JSON and INI.

Bonus round: CLIs for single-file databases

Name and link	Description	File format
Firebird	Firebird is a FOSS database that can be used from a single file, like SQLite. "isql is a program that allows the user to issue arbitrary SQL commands".	Binary
GNU Recutils	"[A] set of tools and libraries to access human-editable, plain text databases called recfiles."	Text-based, roughly "key: value"
SDB	"[A] simple string key/value database based on djb's cdb disk storage and supports JSON and arrays introspection."	Binary
sqlite3(1)	"[A] simple command-line utility [...] that allows the user to manually enter and execute SQL statements against an SQLite database."	Binary

License

The contents of this document is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. By contributing you agree to release your contribution under this license.

Disclosure

Sqawk, jsonwatch, Remarshal and initool are developed by the curator of this document.