9 ms·

Show HN: Simple tool for creating command-line bar charts

86 points by jwmhjwmh 5y ago

the_arun 5y ago
Anyway we could use this with realtime rendering? For eg: I pipe data from top command to this script to see graphs/charts change it dynamically?
- jwmhjwmh 5y ago
  You would probably need a wrapper script to do this. The script could periodically clear the screen and call "barchart" with the new input data, re-rendering the chart from scratch. "barchart" is a very simple shell script that doesn't do much on its own.
- johndough 5y ago
  Slightly relevant: The program "htop" displays CPU usage with bars on the command line. https://htop.dev/ https://htop.dev/
- johnchristopher 5y ago
  watch -n1 ./barchart -w 80 data
ducktective 5y ago
Nice! There is also https://github.com/dkogan/feedgnuplot https://github.com/dkogan/feedgnuplot
- mihi 5y ago
  Nice, this is exactly what I've been looking for for a while now. Especially the real-time streaming mode. Thanks for posting!
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
"The script should work with any POSIX shell." Nice work!
xcambar 5y ago
sh for arg parsing and configuration detection (cols). awk for the actual work. No fluff. Straight to the point. Just Works. Congrats to the author.
dunefox 5y ago
I would rather use this: https://github.com/Evizero/UnicodePlots.jl https://github.com/Evizero/UnicodePlots.jl along with a little scripting.
version_five 5y ago
As someone else pointed out, this definitely gets points for using sh/awk. Just wanted to mention that gnuplot also has a "dumb" output option that will generate ascii plots in the terminal. Thay is usually my go-to for this use case.
- teitoklien 5y ago
  +1 gnuplot is awesome But this showHN project pretty cool too
version_five 5y ago
Hi jwmhjwmh - thanks for posting this. I just wanted to add, for me, two important features of a utility like this are 1. to accept input from a pipe, and 2. to specify a delimiter. My usual use would be data source | processing | plot E.g. a csv, cut or awk, then either print the data or plot. The features I suggested make this workflow easier, but I don't know how common that is. I'd be interested to know how other people would use this.
- jwmhjwmh 5y ago
  The script does accept input from a pipe, just as Awk does. Specifying a delimiter seems like it should be doable. To answer your question, I mainly use this for counting lines of code: cloc --by-file --csv src/ | awk -F, '/^C/{print$5,$2}' | barchart | less (The above pipeline counts the lines of C code in files in the src directory.) EDIT: Actually, the script can pretty easily support alternative delimiters. Let's say you wanted "," as a delimiter. Instead of writing: barchart data Just write: sed 's/,/ /' data | barchart (This sed invocation will only replace the first comma, so it won't mess with your labels.)
  - pdimitar 5y ago
    Have you tried the `tokei` tool for counting lines of code? It can also output in machine-readable formats IIRC.
    - jwmhjwmh 5y ago
      I just tried it at your suggestion. I do like the JSON output.
AliBoukeroui 5y ago
This is really useful :)
Waterluvian 5y ago
As an intermediate Linux user I’ve found shell to be both wondrously powerful as well as frustratingly difficult to write. You can do so much. And the model of chaining known, stable programs together is elegant. But it feels hard to write and maintain good code with. Even in this barchart program there’s a string of awk within this code. So it got me wondering: is there any high quality text editor or IDE support for shell scripts? Perhaps one that even understands or looks at the inputs and outputs to other programs and understands hen you’re writing awk or sed or whatnot inside it? And what about the concept of a higher level ergonomic language that compiles to a shell script?
- jwmhjwmh 5y ago
  There exist more modern shells like Fish Shell and Oil Shell. I haven't used them, but they're probably nicer to use than POSIX shell. I'm sure they have pipes and stuff too.
  - ewen-lbh 5y ago
    I use Fish, and can confirm that it has pipes, along with string substitution, redirection (>, >>, 2>, etc.), functions, etc. The difference is that fish's keywords are closer to programming languages' (all blocks end with `end`, no esac nor fi), fish kind of looks like Ruby.
- ducktective 5y ago
  There is a LSP for shell: shellcheck
kgarten 5y ago
nice little project :) on a tangent I was playing with https://github.com/piccolomo/plotext https://github.com/piccolomo/plotext for a bit (especially on a data analysis server connected over ssh it's quite useful, if you don't have the bandwidth to start a jupyter notebook).
kh_hk 5y ago
Nice one! I had some fun creating a minimal (7 lines) bash implementation for bars using reverse video mode awhile ago. https://eskerda.com/minimal-bash-progress-bar-ansi-escape-sequences/ https://eskerda.com/minimal-bash-progress-bar-ansi-escape-se...
designerdonna22 5y ago
Nice and Supercool!

86 points by jwmhjwmh 5y ago

Anyway we could use this with realtime rendering? For eg: I pipe data from top command to this script to see graphs/charts change it dynamically?

jwmhjwmh 5y ago
You would probably need a wrapper script to do this. The script could periodically clear the screen and call "barchart" with the new input data, re-rendering the chart from scratch. "barchart" is a very simple shell script that doesn't do much on its own.
johndough 5y ago
Slightly relevant: The program "htop" displays CPU usage with bars on the command line. https://htop.dev/ https://htop.dev/
johnchristopher 5y ago
watch -n1 ./barchart -w 80 data

ducktective 5y ago

Nice! There is also https://github.com/dkogan/feedgnuplot https://github.com/dkogan/feedgnuplot

mihi 5y ago
Nice, this is exactly what I've been looking for for a while now. Especially the real-time streaming mode. Thanks for posting!

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

"The script should work with any POSIX shell." Nice work!

xcambar 5y ago

sh for arg parsing and configuration detection (cols). awk for the actual work. No fluff. Straight to the point. Just Works. Congrats to the author.

dunefox 5y ago

I would rather use this: https://github.com/Evizero/UnicodePlots.jl https://github.com/Evizero/UnicodePlots.jl along with a little scripting.

version_five 5y ago

As someone else pointed out, this definitely gets points for using sh/awk. Just wanted to mention that gnuplot also has a "dumb" output option that will generate ascii plots in the terminal. Thay is usually my go-to for this use case.

teitoklien 5y ago
+1 gnuplot is awesome But this showHN project pretty cool too

version_five 5y ago

Hi jwmhjwmh - thanks for posting this. I just wanted to add, for me, two important features of a utility like this are 1. to accept input from a pipe, and 2. to specify a delimiter. My usual use would be data source | processing | plot E.g. a csv, cut or awk, then either print the data or plot. The features I suggested make this workflow easier, but I don't know how common that is. I'd be interested to know how other people would use this.

jwmhjwmh 5y ago
The script does accept input from a pipe, just as Awk does. Specifying a delimiter seems like it should be doable. To answer your question, I mainly use this for counting lines of code: cloc --by-file --csv src/ | awk -F, '/^C/{print$5,$2}' | barchart | less (The above pipeline counts the lines of C code in files in the src directory.) EDIT: Actually, the script can pretty easily support alternative delimiters. Let's say you wanted "," as a delimiter. Instead of writing: barchart data Just write: sed 's/,/ /' data | barchart (This sed invocation will only replace the first comma, so it won't mess with your labels.)
- pdimitar 5y ago
  Have you tried the `tokei` tool for counting lines of code? It can also output in machine-readable formats IIRC.
  - jwmhjwmh 5y ago
    I just tried it at your suggestion. I do like the JSON output.

AliBoukeroui 5y ago

This is really useful :)

Waterluvian 5y ago

As an intermediate Linux user I’ve found shell to be both wondrously powerful as well as frustratingly difficult to write. You can do so much. And the model of chaining known, stable programs together is elegant. But it feels hard to write and maintain good code with. Even in this barchart program there’s a string of awk within this code. So it got me wondering: is there any high quality text editor or IDE support for shell scripts? Perhaps one that even understands or looks at the inputs and outputs to other programs and understands hen you’re writing awk or sed or whatnot inside it? And what about the concept of a higher level ergonomic language that compiles to a shell script?

jwmhjwmh 5y ago
There exist more modern shells like Fish Shell and Oil Shell. I haven't used them, but they're probably nicer to use than POSIX shell. I'm sure they have pipes and stuff too.
- ewen-lbh 5y ago
  I use Fish, and can confirm that it has pipes, along with string substitution, redirection (>, >>, 2>, etc.), functions, etc. The difference is that fish's keywords are closer to programming languages' (all blocks end with `end`, no esac nor fi), fish kind of looks like Ruby.
ducktective 5y ago
There is a LSP for shell: shellcheck

kgarten 5y ago

nice little project :) on a tangent I was playing with https://github.com/piccolomo/plotext https://github.com/piccolomo/plotext for a bit (especially on a data analysis server connected over ssh it's quite useful, if you don't have the bandwidth to start a jupyter notebook).

kh_hk 5y ago

Nice one! I had some fun creating a minimal (7 lines) bash implementation for bars using reverse video mode awhile ago. https://eskerda.com/minimal-bash-progress-bar-ansi-escape-sequences/ https://eskerda.com/minimal-bash-progress-bar-ansi-escape-se...

designerdonna22 5y ago

Nice and Supercool!