simple-csv-viewer

A small, native Windows CSV table viewer built with C++20 and raw Win32 API.

It is designed as a fast, read-only utility for opening CSV-like files in a virtual table, without .NET, Electron, Qt, or other heavy UI stacks.

Screenshot

Features

• Native Win32 app (WC_LISTVIEW in report + owner-data mode).
• Memory-mapped file loading for efficient handling of large files.
• Lazy row/cell parsing for virtualized display performance.
• Open files from:
• command-line argument (csvviewer.exe <path-to-file>)
• File -> Open...
• drag and drop onto the app window
• Header row support:
• first CSV row is used as column headers
• header columns are created dynamically
• Delimiter detection:
• semicolon (;), comma (,), tab (\t)
• consistency-based heuristic with semicolon priority on ties
• Encoding detection:
• UTF-8 with BOM
• UTF-8 (valid UTF-8 byte sequences)
• ANSI/code-page fallback
• Read-only table behavior:
• vertical and horizontal scrolling
• full-row selection
• Ctrl+C / Edit -> Copy copies selected rows as tab-separated text
• Usability:
• status bar with row/column count, delimiter, and encoding
• search/filter box (case-insensitive row filtering)
• column sorting by clicking headers (toggle ascending/descending)
• auto-fit columns command
• zoom in/out and preset font sizes
• double-click cell for detail popup
• recent files menu persisted in settings.ini

Current Scope

• Read-only viewer only (no cell editing or save-back).
• Pragmatic CSV parser with quoted field support and escaped quotes ("").
• Embedded newlines inside quoted fields are not a primary v1 target.

Build

Requirements

• Windows 10/11
• Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools (C++ workload)
• CMake 3.15+
• PowerShell 7+ (recommended)

Build Commands

Release build:

.\build.ps1 -Configuration Release

Debug build:

.\build.ps1 -Configuration Debug

Use Ninja generator (if ninja is available on PATH):

.\build.ps1 -UseNinja -Configuration Release

Clean build directory before configure/build:

.\build.ps1 -Clean -Configuration Release

Optional smoke test (launches and closes the GUI executable):

.\build.ps1 -Configuration Release -RunSmokeTest

Output

• Visual Studio generator: build\Release\csvviewer.exe (or build\Debug\csvviewer.exe)
• Ninja generator: build\csvviewer.exe

Usage

• Launch without arguments, then open via File -> Open...
• Or launch directly with a file path:

.\build\Release\csvviewer.exe .\sample.csv

Repository

GitHub: git@github.com:Danmoreng/simple-csv-viewer.git

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE.