Typewriter

A library and command-line tool for displaying 2 columns of text. The original purpose of this library is to improve failed test output when comparing two multiline strings. Go from this:

To this:

Library Usage & Example

First you'll want to get the library with

go get -u github.com/j-delaney/typewriter

Example of a function for printing two slices of strings side-by-side:

func PrintSideBySide(s1, s2 []string) {
  var output string
  var err error

  output, err = typewriter.Sprint(s1, s2, Config{
    ShowLineNumbers:     true,
    Separator:           "|",
    MarkFirstDifference: true,
  })

  if err != nil {
    panic(err)    	  
  }
  fmt.Print(output)
}

This would print something in the form of:

1. abc |abcd
2. defg|ef
3. hi  |ghi
4. j   |j

Command-Line Installation and Usage

If you just want the side_by_side command-line tool you should run this command:

go get -u github.com/j-delaney/typewriter/cmd/side_by_side

This will put the side_by_side tool in your ~/go/bin directory.

If ~/go/bin is in your PATH then you can just run side_by_side from your shell. Otherwise you'll need to run ~/go/bin/side_by_side.

It expects two file paths as arguments. For example, if you want to see foo.txt and bar.txt side-by-side run side_by_side path/to/foo.txt path/to/bar.txt.

Run side_by_side -h to see all options.