Getting started

🇷🇺 Эта страница на русском · ← Documentation index

Install

The quickest route is Cargo:

cargo install tuitab

This installs three identical commands — tuitab and the shorter aliases ttab and ttb. Other options (Homebrew, AUR, Debian, pre-built binaries) are in the main README.

Open a file

Pass any supported file as the first argument:

tuitab data.csv
tuitab report.parquet
tuitab books.xlsx
tuitab app.db

Format	Extensions	Notes
CSV / TSV	.csv, .tsv	Delimiter auto-detected; override with -d
JSON	.json	Opens as a tree over the real document
JSONL / NDJSON	.jsonl, .ndjson	One record per line
YAML	.yaml, .yml	Tree, like JSON
TOML	.toml	Tree, like JSON
Parquet	.parquet	Columnar, fast
Arrow / Feather	.arrow, .feather, .ipc	Read and written
Excel	.xlsx, .xls	Multi-sheet workbooks open as a sheet list
Markdown	.md, .markdown	A page is one row: frontmatter fields are columns, the text is body, the path is file
SQLite	.sqlite, .sqlite3, .db	Tables open as a table list
DuckDB	.duckdb, .ddb, .db	Which engine a .db is comes from the file's own header, not its name

For workbooks and databases, tuitab first shows an overview (sheets or tables); press Enter on a row to open it, Esc / q to go back. Tables can be edited and saved back — see Databases.

JSON, YAML and TOML are not flattened into a copy: the sheet is a view over the document itself, Enter dives into a nested object or list, and saving re-serialises the tree. Converting between them is just a different extension on Ctrl+S.

Force a format

-t is required for stdin, and for a file it overrides the extension:

tuitab -t yaml deploy.conf     # a YAML file that is not called .yaml

An unknown extension is decided by the contents, so deploy.conf usually opens correctly with no flag at all.

Open a database that does not exist yet

tuitab inventory.sqlite        # nothing there — a blank sheet opens

Add columns, give them types, add rows, Ctrl+S, and tuitab writes a real typed table. See Databases.

Override the delimiter

When auto-detection guesses wrong (or you have a ;-separated file):

tuitab data.csv -d ';'

Browse several files

Pass more than one path and tuitab opens a file list instead of a single table:

tuitab orders.csv customers.csv products.parquet

Each file becomes a row showing its name, size, and modified time. Enter opens the highlighted file; Esc / q returns to the list.

Browse a directory

Point tuitab at a folder (or run it with no arguments to use the current one):

tuitab ./reports/
tuitab               # current directory

You get a navigable file browser — open files with Enter, step back out with Esc / q.

Read from a pipe

tuitab reads from stdin when data is piped in. Tell it the format with -t:

cat data.csv | tuitab -t csv
psql -c "SELECT * FROM orders" --csv | tuitab -t csv
echo '[{"id":1,"name":"Alice"}]'   | tuitab -t json

Stdin understands csv, tsv, txt, json, jsonl/ndjson, yaml/yml and toml. (txt is treated as CSV.) To read Parquet, Arrow, Excel, Markdown, SQLite, or DuckDB, open the file by path instead of piping it. - works as an explicit stdin path: cat data.csv | tuitab -t csv -.

The screen

┌ sample.csv ───────────────────────────────────────┐
│  id  s│ name        s│ age #│ salary  ~│ department s│   ← header row (name + type icon)
│▌ 1    │ Alice Johnson│ 30   │ 75000.00 │ Engineering │   ← cursor row (highlighted)
│  2    │ Bob Smith    │ 45   │ 92000.50 │ Management  │
│  …                                                  │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ NORMAL   Loaded 20 rows                  row 3/20 col 3/5 │  ← status bar
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

• The header shows each column name plus a small type icon (s string, # integer, ~ float, d date, t datetime, % percentage, $ currency, B file size, ? boolean).
• The status bar shows the current mode, a message, and your position.
• Press ? at any time for the in-app help overlay.

Next steps

• Learn the keybindings.
• Try charts, pivot tables, and JOINs.
• Edit a table and write it back with Databases.
• Let an assistant compute over your files with the MCP server (tuitab --mcp).
• Browse task-oriented recipes.