Rainbow CSV

Main Features

• Highlight columns in comma (.csv), tab (.tsv), semicolon and pipe - separated files in different colors.
• Transform and filter tables using built-in SQL-like query language.
• Fixed sticky header line (optional).
• Provide info about column on hover.
• Automatic consistency check for csv files (CSVLint).
• Align columns with spaces and Shrink (trim spaces from fields).
• Multi-cursor column edit.
• Works in browser (vscode.dev).

Usage

Rainbow CSV looks better and is much more usable in general with dark mode.
If your csv, semicolon-separated or tab-separated file doesn't have .csv or .tsv extension, you can manually enable highlighting by clicking on the current language label mark in the right bottom corner and then choosing "CSV", "TSV", "CSV (semicolon)" or "CSV (pipe)" depending on the file content, see this screenshot.
Another way to do this: select one separator character with mouse cursor -> right click -> "Set as Rainbow separator".

Supported separators

Content-based separator autodetection

Rainbow CSV runs a table autodetection algorithm for all "Plain Text" and "*.csv" files. In most cases, this is a very cheap operation because autodetection usually stops after checking only 1 or 2 topmost lines.
Autodetection can be disabled in the extension settings.
By default only comma, tab, semicolon and pipe are tried during autodetection, but you can adjust the list of candidate separators in extension settings.

Enabling fixed sticky header line

You can enable sticky (fixed) header line by turning on VSCode sticky scroll feature: editor.stickyScroll.enabled setting.
You can see the sticky header in action on the main screenshot.

Sticky scroll setting will affect every filetype in VSCode so if you want to limit the setting to CSV files only, enter the following command: Open User Settings (JSON); And add the following lines to the JSON config:

    "[csv][dynamic csv][tsv][csv (semicolon)]": {
        "editor.stickyScroll.enabled": true
    },

You can adjust the list of CSV dialects here, but keeping "[csv]" entry is required due to a configuration quirk.

Customizing file extension - separator association

If you often work with csv files with one specific extension (e.g. ".dat") and you don't want to rely on the autodetection algorithm, you can associate that extension with one of the supported separators.
For example to associate ".dat" extension with pipe-separated files and ".csv" with semicolon-separated files add the following lines to your VS Code json config:

"files.associations": {
    "*.dat": "csv (pipe)",
    "*.csv": "csv (semicolon)"
},

Important: language identifiers in the config must be specified in lower case! E.g. use csv (semicolon), not CSV (semicolon).
List of supported language ids: "csv", "tsv", "csv (semicolon)", "csv (pipe)", "csv (whitespace)", "dynamic csv".

Working with arbitrary separators

Rainbow CSV allows using an arbitrary character or string as a separator. You can add the separator to the list of autodetected separators in the VSCode settings or if you just want to use it once you can either:

• Select Dynamic CSV filetype (bottom right corner) and then enter the separator text in the popup dialog.
• Select the separator text with the cursor and run Rainbow CSV: Set separator ... command.

Dynamic CSV filetype also supports multiline CSV fields escaped in double quotes as described in RFC-4180.

CSVLint consistency check

The linter checks the following:

• Consistency of double quotes usage in CSV rows.
• Consistency of number of fields per CSV row.

To recheck a csv file click on "CSVLint" button.

Working with large files

To enable Rainbow CSV for very big files (more than 300K lines or 20MB) disable "Editor:Large File Optimizations" option in VS Code settings.
You can preview huge files by clicking "Preview... " option in VS Code File Explorer context menu.
All Rainbow CSV features would be disabled by VSCode if the file is bigger than 50MB.

Colors customization

You can customize Rainbow CSV colors to increase contrast, see Instructions.
This is especially helpful if you are using one of Light color themes.

Working with CSV files with comments

Some CSV files can contain comment lines e.g. metadata before the header line.
To allow CSVLint, content-based autodetection algorithms, and Align, Shrink, ColumnEdit commands to work properly with such files you need to adjust your settings.

Aligning/Shrinking table

You can align columns in CSV files by clicking "Align" status-line button or using Align command.
To avoid modifying the original file you can configure the extension to align in a temp scratch file instead.
To shrink the table, i.e. remove leading and trailing whitespaces, click "Shrink" status-line button or use Shrink command

Settings

You can customize Rainbow CSV in the extension settings section of VSCode settings.
There you can find the list of available options and their description.

Commands:

Align, Shrink

Align columns with whitespaces or shrink them (remove leading/trailing whitespaces)

Set separator

Set the currently selected text (single character or multiline string) as a separator and re-highlight the file.

ColumnEditBefore, ColumnEditAfter, ColumnEditSelect

Activate multi-cursor column editing for the column under the cursor. Works only for files with less than 10000 lines. For larger files you can use an RBQL query.
WARNING: This is a dangerous mode. It is possible to accidentally corrupt table structure by incorrectly using "Backspace" or entering separator or double quote characters. Use RBQL if you are not sure.
To remove cursor/selection from the header line use "Alt+Click" on it.

SetVirtualHeader

Input a comma-separated string with column names to adjust column names displayed in hover tooltips. The actual header line and file content won't be affected. "Virtual" header is persistent and will be associated with the parent file across VSCode sessions.

SetHeaderLine

Uses the current line to adjust column names displayed in hover tooltips. The actual header line and file content won't be affected. This is a "Virtual" header and will be persistent and will be associated with the parent file across VSCode sessions.

RBQL

Enter RBQL - SQL-like language query editing mode.

SetJoinTableName

Set a custom name for the current file so you can use it instead of the file path in RBQL JOIN queries

SQL-like "RBQL" query language

Rainbow CSV has a built-in RBQL query language interpreter that allows you to run SQL-like queries using a1, a2, a3, ... column names.
Example:

SELECT a1, a2 * 10 WHERE a1 == "Buy" && a4.indexOf('oil') != -1 ORDER BY parseInt(a2), a4 LIMIT 100

To enter query-editing mode, execute RBQL VSCode command.
RBQL is a very simple and powerful tool that would allow you to quickly and easily perform the most common data-manipulation tasks and convert your csv tables to bash scripts, single-line json, single-line xml files, etc.
It is very easy to start using RBQL even if you don't know SQL. For example to cut out the third and first columns use SELECT a3, a1
You can use RBQL command for all possible types of files (e.g. .js, .xml, .html), but for non-table files, only two variables: NR and a1 would be available.

Full Documentation

Screenshot of RBQL Console:

Other

Comparison of Rainbow CSV technology with traditional graphical column alignment

Advantages:

• WYSIWYG
• Familiar editing environment of your favorite text editor
• Zero-cost abstraction: Syntax highlighting is essentially free, while graphical column alignment can be computationally expensive
• High information density: Rainbow CSV shows more data per screen because it doesn't insert column-aligning whitespaces.
• Color -> column association allows locating the column of interest more quickly when looking back and forth between the data and other objects on the screen (with column alignment one has to locate the header or count the columns to find the right one)
• Ability to visually associate two same-colored columns from two different windows. This is not possible with graphical column alignment

Disadvantages:

• Rainbow CSV may be less effective for CSV files with many (> 10) columns and for files with multiline fields, although textual alignment can significantly improve the situation.
• Rainbow CSV may be less usable with light mode because font colors become less distinguishable when compared to a dark mode (this phenomenon is also described here). This problem could be somewhat mitigated by using customized high-contrast rainbow colors (see color customization section).

References

Related VSCode extensions

These extensions can work well together with Rainbow CSV and provide additional functionality e.g. export to Excel format:

• Excel Viewer
• Edit CSV
• Data Preview

Rainbow CSV and similar plugins in other editors:

• Rainbow CSV extension in Vim
• rainbow-csv package in Atom
• rainbow_csv plugin in Sublime Text
• rainbow_csv plugin in gedit - doesn't support quoted commas in csv
• rainbow_csv_4_nedit in NEdit
• CSV highlighting in Nano
• Rainbow CSV in IntelliJ IDEA
• CSVLint for Notepad++

RBQL

• RBQL
• Library and CLI App for Python RBQL
• Library and CLI App for JavaScript RBQL