Re: Displaying TSV files

[Greg Raven]

I may be missing something, but when I need to do something along these 
lines I open in Numbers (or Excel), which allows an immediate visual 
confirmation of column integrity. 

On Friday, March 17, 2023 at 3:48:56 PM UTC-7 Laurel Cooper 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!
>
> [image: tsv.jpg]
>

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Re: Displaying TSV files

[Neil Faiman]

If your goal is, very specifically, to be sure that every line in your file has 
17 tabs in it, there is a simple solution.

>From the BBEdit Text menu, choose “Process lines containing…”.

Choose the “Find lines that … do not contain: option.
In the search field, enter

([^\t]*\t){17}

Check the Grep option, choose your preferred result options, and click Process. 
You will get a list (or report, or whatever) of all the lines in your file that 
don’t contain 17 tabs.

Cheers,
Neil Faiman

> On Mar 17, 2023, at 6:35 PM, Laurel Cooper  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!
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> This is the BBEdit Talk public discussion group. If you have a feature 
> request or need technical support, please email "supp...@barebones.com" 
> rather than posting here. Follow @bbedit on Twitter: 
> >
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>  
> .
> 

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Re: Displaying TSV files

[Bruce Van Allen]

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  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!
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> This is the BBEdit Talk public discussion group. If you have a feature 
> request or need technical support, please email "supp...@barebones.com" 
> rather than posting here. Follow @bbedit on Twitter: 
> 
> --- 
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
> "BBEdit Talk" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an 
> email to bbedit+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion on the web visit 
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/bbedit/a0702843-bbee-486f-a828-0bb6faff8d51n%40googlegroups.com.
> 

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Re: Displaying TSV files

[Laurel Cooper]

Thanks!  I am on version 14.6.4
I tried changing it to Courier font and that is actually much easier to 
read.

Laurel

On 3/17/23 3:52 PM, Rich Siegel wrote:

[This email originated from outside of OSU. Use caution with links and 
attachments.]

On 17 Mar 2023, at 18:35, Laurel Cooper 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 recommend using BBEdit 14.6.x and a monospaced font; if you're using a 
pre-14.6 version, try updating and see how that works for you.

R.

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--
Laurel Cooper
Dept. of Botany and Plant Pathology
2503 Cordley Hall
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97331

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Re: Displaying TSV files

[Rich Siegel]

On 17 Mar 2023, at 18:35, Laurel Cooper 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 recommend using BBEdit 14.6.x and a monospaced font; if you're using a 
pre-14.6 version, try updating and see how that works for you.

R.

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