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by rpassos 56 days ago
I've been using https://github.com/medialab/xan for anything csv. It's the best tool there is for reading and analyzing csv files, but not for writing them. Something like cell-sheet-tui would fit my workflow very well, since I am using neovim to edit csv files manually (as well as some csv merging features offered by xan to simplify the process).

The reason why I find your software promising is because dealing with csv in plain text is very disorienting with the inconsistent horizontal cell space. A csv-aware text editor would help a lot there with two issues in particular:

- not having to set commas manually, especially not having to count them between empty cells

- being able to navigate using h/j/k/l between cells instead of having to get creative with vim-motions on plain text

OP, if you're reading this:

I would greatly appreciate if this tool could focus on the writing experience and less with anything formula engine related, since xan is already a very performant tool for that, even at large data sets. Replacing or even competing with xan seems very difficult in my eyes, considering both tools are targeting a similar audience (rust, minimalist, and performance), which makes me think cell could focus more on the writing experience, like I said.

There are some bugs I countered right away and I'll get to open issues in due time. Thanks for making this and I hope I can replace neovim with cell for anything csv in the future!

2 comments

> It's the best tool there is for reading and analyzing csv files

It does not appear to support the file types I regularly work with: https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/medical-device-reporting...

These files have a field delimiter of '|' with a line delimiter of '\r\n', as individual fields also contain '\n' characters.

I prefer visidata as the program stays running while searching and navigating through large files, making subsequent searches and filtering much faster, plus editing/writing is also supported, as well as Excel and other formats I regularly use.

Author here - thanks for bringing this up!

Cell is very much tailored towards what you're looking for. My vision was "Excel but it's (Neo)Vim". Editing files should feel just as smooth as looking at the data. I believe Xan and Cell could actually pipe into each other quite nicely for rendering more complex data.

I'd really appreciate your time to report the bugs you encountered. Looking forward to them.