How does it work?

This tool formats delimited text into aligned columns or a table. It's useful for creating readable tabular data from CSV, TSV, or any delimited text.

The formatting follows these rules:

Each line is treated as a row in the table
Lines are split into columns using the specified delimiter
Each column is padded to ensure alignment
You can specify the amount of padding between columns
You can mark the first row as a header (adds a separator line)
You can sort the data by a specific column
Sorting can be alphabetical or numerical, ascending or descending

Example

Consider this CSV data:

Name,Age,City,Occupation
John Doe,42,New York,Engineer
Jane Smith,38,Los Angeles,Designer
Bob Johnson,55,Chicago,Manager
Alice Brown,29,San Francisco,Developer
Charlie Wilson,47,Boston,Architect

After formatting to columns (with header):

Name            Age  City           Occupation  
--------------  ---  -------------  ----------  
John Doe        42   New York       Engineer    
Jane Smith      38   Los Angeles    Designer    
Bob Johnson     55   Chicago        Manager     
Alice Brown     29   San Francisco  Developer   
Charlie Wilson  47   Boston         Architect

After formatting and sorting by Age (column 1) numerically:

Name            Age  City           Occupation  
--------------  ---  -------------  ----------  
Alice Brown     29   San Francisco  Developer   
Jane Smith      38   Los Angeles    Designer    
John Doe        42   New York       Engineer    
Charlie Wilson  47   Boston         Architect   
Bob Johnson     55   Chicago        Manager

This tool is useful for:

Creating readable tables from CSV or delimited data
Formatting data for reports or documentation
Aligning columns in code or configuration files
Preparing data for presentation or analysis
Converting spreadsheet exports to fixed-width formats

Common Delimiters

, - Comma (for CSV files)
\t - Tab (for TSV files, type "\t" in the delimiter field)
| - Pipe (common in data processing)
; - Semicolon (used in some European CSV formats)
- Space (for space-separated values)

Tip:

For best results, use a monospaced font (like Courier, Consolas, or Monaco) when viewing the formatted output. This ensures that the columns align properly.