A Swiss Army Chainsaw for Data

VisiData is an open source powertool for exploring and manipulating data. It combines the clarity of a spreadsheet, the efficiency of the terminal, and the power of Python, into a lightweight utility which can handle millions of rows with ease.

Latest Version: 1.5.2 (2019-01-12)

screenshot of VisiData in action

10 Ways to Use VisiData

  1. explore new datasets effortlessly, no matter the format: vd foo.json bar.csv baz.xls
  2. open a Frequency Analysis for any column: move to that column and press Shift+F
  3. convert from any input format into any output format: vd -b input.csv -o output.json
  4. as an interactive replacement for grep, awk, sed, cut, sort, uniq: pipe into |vd
  5. scrape HTML table data from a webpage: vd https://html.com/tables
  6. see a visual diff of two sheets with the same structure: vd --diff foo1.csv foo2.csv
  7. explore an object from the Python REPL: import visidata as vd; vd.view(obj)
  8. take a random sample from a large .csv: Shift+R and give the sample size
  9. create an adhoc data pipeline: Ctrl+D foo.vd to save the cmdlog, then vd -b -p foo.vd
  10. rename files: vd, edit the filenames, then Ctrl+S to commit (see video #4)

There are hundreds of other uses for VisiData. The only limit is your imagination!

Any Format

VisiData loads data from many different sources, including json, csv, sqlite, shp, and html. New loaders are included in every release, and other data formats can be supported easily.

Any Terminal

VisiData works on Linux and MacOS systems entirely within a terminal, and continues to work seamlessly over ssh and within tmux. It supports modern terminal features like wide Unicode characters, 256-colors, and even some mouse commands. Scatterplots are drawn with the Unicode braille character set.

$ cd data    # if you have some data
$ ls         # and you're not sure what to do with that data
$ vd .       # it's time to VisiData

You can use VisiData from within any terminal-based shell or Python REPL. Remember, if you can cd, you can vd.

Become a VisiData Wizard

About the Author

My name is Saul Pwanson and I'm a software architect and amateur data journalist. I live in Seattle but the terminal is my home.

I am building an ecosystem and community for textpunk powertools. If you love the design of VisiData, send me an email; or you can support me on Patreon directly.

Share and enjoy!