Useful command line tools for reporters

(Originally taught at the NICAR 2015 conference by Kendall Taggart & Agustin Armendariz)

Ever had a CSV file too large to open in Excel? Ever had one so big it crashed your computer? We’ll show you some simple tricks for wrangling data on the command line. If you've never programmed before but frequently use Excel and SQL, this class will make your life better. Bonus: We’ll show you how to make your Mac recite poetry for you.

This is designed to be Part 2 of a beginners' class: lightly touching on the basics and then getting into more interesting tools (fetching from the web, intermediate data wrangling, etc.)

It will be taught on Macs. If you're a Windows user, this class could still be helpful. It will show you what's possible on command line. Other resources you may want to check out:

• Matt Kiefer is doing a command line tools class in Windows using Cygwin on Friday morning.
• Use terminal through a virtual machine. Check out this from the Center for Investigative Reporting.
• Liz Lucas is teaching an introductory class on command line for Windows.
• AJ Vicens & Chris Keller are teaching "A journalists guide to getting started" on the command line.

Areas this course will cover

Reviewing the basics:

• Navigation

  • cd = changing directories
  • cd .. = move up one directory
    • cd ../.. = move up two directories
  • ls = listing files/folders
  • pwd = print working directory (for when you get lost)
  • mkdir = make a new folder
  • ctrl + a = move to beginning of line
  • ctrl + e = move to end of line
  • ctrl + c = stop process

• Basic data wrangling

  • head = looking at the first few rows of a spreadsheet
  • tail = looking at the last few rows of a spreadsheet
  • head original_filename.csv > firstfewrows.csv = exporting the first few rows of a big spreadsheet
  • wc -l = counting the total number of rows
  • vim = powerful if hard to learn file editor
    • You'll want to know this, but we won't be able to get to the details.
    • Your Mac comes with a good built in tutorial. Go to your terminal and type 'vimtutor'
  • egrep = powerful tool to search files
  • uniq = file inspection for obvious duplicate records
    • uniq -d filename = print only duplicate repeated lines in file

Intermediate stuff:

• Fetch things from the interwebs

  • wget
  • cURL ($ curl wttr.in)

• Intermediate data wrangling

  • csvkit
  • sqlite (from commandline)

And an important P.S.:

Why you need to learn Git:

• Chapters 1-3 of the Pro Git book will give you a good, relatively quick overview

If you end up spending any amount of time on the terminal on a regular basis get this book:

Linux Pocket Guide, 2nd Edition

Tutorials:

UNIX Tutorial

Introduction to the Mac OS X Command Line