Convert tab separated values to ASCII table
Solution 1:
How can I convert tab separated values to an ASCII table?
I use Text Tables Generator for this kind of task.
I pasted your data on that page and it created the following table:
+------+------+------+------+------------+
| a | b | c | d | cat |
+------+------+------+------+------------+
| NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL |
+------+------+------+------+------------+
| NULL | NULL | NULL | d | d |
+------+------+------+------+------------+
| NULL | NULL | c | NULL | c |
+------+------+------+------+------------+
| NULL | NULL | c | d | c; d |
+------+------+------+------+------------+
| NULL | b | NULL | NULL | b |
+------+------+------+------+------------+
| NULL | b | NULL | d | b; d |
+------+------+------+------+------------+
| NULL | b | c | NULL | b; c |
+------+------+------+------+------------+
| NULL | b | c | d | b; c; d |
+------+------+------+------+------------+
| a | NULL | NULL | NULL | a |
+------+------+------+------+------------+
| a | NULL | NULL | d | a; d |
+------+------+------+------+------------+
| a | NULL | c | NULL | a; c |
+------+------+------+------+------------+
| a | NULL | c | d | a; c; d |
+------+------+------+------+------------+
| a | b | NULL | NULL | a; b |
+------+------+------+------+------------+
| a | b | NULL | d | a; b; d |
+------+------+------+------+------------+
| a | b | c | NULL | a; b; c |
+------+------+------+------+------------+
| a | b | c | d | a; b; c; d |
+------+------+------+------+------------+
You can then copy this output (the generator has done most of the hard work), paste into notepad++ and clean up as appropriate.
Solution 2:
If you need a command-line solution, you can also use pandoc with the pandoc-placetable filter.
Place your table in foo.txt and execute:
pandoc-placetable --file=foo.txt --delimiter="\t" --header | pandoc -f json -t markdown-simple_tables-multiline_tables -o output.md
Which results in the following output.md:
| a | b | c | d | cat |
|------|------|------|------|------------|
| NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL |
| NULL | NULL | NULL | d | d |
| NULL | NULL | c | NULL | c |
| NULL | NULL | c | d | c; d |
| NULL | b | NULL | NULL | b |
| NULL | b | NULL | d | b; d |
| NULL | b | c | NULL | b; c |
| NULL | b | c | d | b; c; d |
| a | NULL | NULL | NULL | a |
| a | NULL | NULL | d | a; d |
| a | NULL | c | NULL | a; c |
| a | NULL | c | d | a; c; d |
| a | b | NULL | NULL | a; b |
| a | b | NULL | d | a; b; d |
| a | b | c | NULL | a; b; c |
| a | b | c | d | a; b; c; d |
To read from STDIN, leave out the --file argument. To print to STDOUT, leave out the -o argument.
Solution 3:
ruslan’s idea of using the Unix/Linux column command is a good one,
but the command line given in their answer doesn’t quite work.
First of all,
column doesn’t recognize \t (or \\t) on the command line as a tab.
If you have bash, you can do
column -t -s$'\t' foo.txt
Otherwise, you can do
column -t -s"$(printf '\t')" foo.txt
But even that doesn’t answer the question. You can get the vertical bars by doing
column -t -s$'\t' -o' | ' foo.txt
which produces output like
a | b | c | d | cat
NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL
NULL | NULL | NULL | d | d
NULL | NULL | c | NULL | c
NULL | NULL | c | d | c; d
NULL | b | NULL | NULL | b
NULL | b | NULL | d | b; d
NULL | b | c | NULL | b; c
NULL | b | c | d | b; c; d
a | NULL | NULL | NULL | a
a | NULL | NULL | d | a; d
a | NULL | c | NULL | a; c
a | NULL | c | d | a; c; d
a | b | NULL | NULL | a; b
a | b | NULL | d | a; b; d
a | b | c | NULL | a; b; c
a | b | c | d | a; b; c; d
Adding the dash line after the header manually isn’t so tedious.
If you don’t have access to a full Unix/Linux system, you can use Cygwin or one of the other Unix-likes for this.