Quick tip: Column display

When you work with delimited data (CSV, TSV, etc.), it can be a pain to just see the data in a nice way. For example, this data:

> cat people-example.csv.txt
First Name,Last Name,Country,age
"Bob","Smith","United States",24
"Alice","Williams","Canada",23
"Malcolm","Jone","England",22
"Felix","Brown","USA",23
"Alex","Cooper","Poland",23
"Tod","Campbell","United States",22
"Derek","Ward","Switzerland",25

With Unix-like OSes, you can use the column command to format the layout—for example:

> column -t -s',' people-example.csv.txt
First Name Last Name       Country       age
Bob      Smith           United States  24
Alice    Williams        Canada         23
Malcolm  Jone            England        22
Felix    Brown           USA            23
Alex     Cooper          Poland         23
Tod      Campbell        United States  22
Derek    Ward            Switzerland    25

With Windows, you can use Import-CSV and Format-Table in PowerShell:

> Import-Csv .\people-example.csv.txt | Format-Table First Name, Last Name, Country, age
First Name Last Name Country       age
---------- --------- --------     ---
Bob        Smith    United States  24
Alice      Williams Canada         23
Malcolm    Jone     England        22
Felix      Brown    USA            23
Alex       Cooper   Poland         23
Tod        Campbell United States  22
Derek      Ward     Switzerland    25