alltext

Command-line tool to debug strings produced by other command-line tools. It is a friendlier version of cat -ve. Author uses it to learn how other command-line tools work: bash, vim, echo etc.

Like cat, alltext reads its input from stdin so it is to be used via pipes: like tail -f file | alltext or pbpasteboard | alltext.

cat:

$ printf "\x1b Hello \n" | cat -ve
^[ Hello $
$

alltext:

$ printf "\x1b Hello \n" | alltext
ESC Space H e l l o Space LF
$

Installation

Currently alltext is available on Mac OS X but it should be easy to enable some other types of distribution supported by Rust/Cargo.

The one-file tar with alltext binary can be found on Releases page.

Synopsis

$ alltext --help
alltext - information about text input (including non-printable characters)

options:
  --null     use NUL (\0) as line delimiter instead of default LF (\n)
  --version  print version

example:
  printf "Hello world.\r\n" | alltext

--null option can be useful when you are particularly interested in listeting to \n and \r\n characters from the the input. If you have control over your input you can replace \n with \0 and that will make it easier for you to see \n and \r\n unaffected by line breaks.

TODO

• Optional parameter to print string lengths (example: A A A (3))

Author

alltext is created by Stanislav Pankevich.

License

Released under MIT license, see LICENSE for more details.