Tablr is a simple command line utility for converting back and forth between a simple table markup language and pretty ASCII tables. It reads markup on standard in and writes the corresponding ASCII table to standard out.

The -r flag may be given to convert from an ASCII table to markup also reading and writing on standard in and out.

The tables generated by Tablr are currently very simple. A table is composed of a list of rows, each row may either by a divider or a list of cells. All rows in a table have the same number of cells.

A row of cells is specified on a single line with a | character between each cell.

A divider row is specified by a single line containing one or more - characters and nothing else.

For example, the given markup:

Header 1 | Header 2 | Header 3
-
foo | bar | baz
just the first
||just the last

Will produce the following table when piped through tablr:

+----------------+----------+---------------+
| Header 1       | Header 2 | Header 3      |
+----------------+----------+---------------+
| foo            | bar      | baz           |
| just the first |          |               |
|                |          | just the last |
+----------------+----------+---------------+

Tablr was originally created with VIM integration in mind. You can add the following to your ~/.vimrc file to automatically convert the paragraph under your cursor back and forth between tables and markup.

nnoremap <leader>at vip:!tablr<cr>
nnoremap <leader>ut vip:!tablr -r<cr>