In addition to Rich’s suggestion, you could set tab width to a
larger-than-normal size, to put more space between columns.
I have a little utility written in Applescript, saved in BBEdit’s Scripts
folder, that adds 12 spacebar spaces to the tab width. Successive calls to the
script keep widening the tabs until they hit a maximum (64 spaces), at which it
reverts to standard 4 spaces per tab.
tell application “BBEdit"
set tabW to tab width of text window 1
if tabW > 64 then
set tabW to 4
else
set tabW to tabW + 12
end if
set tab width of text window 1 to tabW
end tell
I assign a keyboard combo to the script (in BBEdit’s Menus and Shortcuts
settings/preferences), so I can quickly space out some columns to more clearly
view the data.
Changing BBEdit’s tab width doesn’t change the file, just the view in BBEdit.
Also check out the Edit -> Columns menu, which allows selecting and
manipulating whole columns. Sometimes a column selection will reveal a problem.
Another approach, which you might prefer over visually inspecting your files,
would be a script that checks every line to be sure there are correct number of
columns (or tabs). The core of such a script could be a regular expression that
assumes the correct number of columns; if you search on it BBEdit, you’ll get a
results window with the number of records/lines found - if that’s not the same
as the number of lines in the file, you’ll need to check the file. A more
elaborate script could pull out the errant lines for you...
— Bruce
_bruce__van_allen__santa_cruz_ca_
> On Mar 17, 2023, at 3:35 PM, Laurel Cooper <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I work with large, tsv-formatted text files The files are 17 column text
> files with the columns separated by tabs. I need to be able to see that none
> of the tabs are missing.
> I can see the tab stops by turning on "Show invisibles", but in some lines
> the tabs are basically on top of each other, and in other places, the text is
> on top of them.
> Is there a better way to display these files?
> I took a screen shot as an example:
> Thanks!
>
> <tsv.jpg>
>
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> <tsv.jpg>
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