display-boxes

Description

Bash function or script to display nice-looking boxes around your content like:

The function will automatically determine the length of each column and draw the box appropriately. It accepts two multi-line strings which have any single-character delimiter to separate columns or 2+ spaces.

Input

$headers

The first contains the header data with tabs separating out the columns.

$body

The second contains the body data which is typically a multi-line string with tabs separating the columns.

$style

The -s argument is optional and can be used to set the box style. Default is 1.

$padding

The -p argument is optional and can be passed in to alter the padding left and right of the data. Default is 1.

$delimiter

The -d argument is optional and can be passed in to specify the data delimiter if it is not a tab or 2+ spaces.

Compatibility

It is recommended you use the argument prefixes to call these, but they are optional for backwards compatibility. The old syntax of: display-box "$headers" "$body" 4 2 is still valid.

Inline Script Option

Also included is a script that will read in stdin and call the display-box function dynamically. This is useful for piping in your content directly. It does still allowing you to pass in arguments to modify the settings.

The syntax of this inline example is:

echo "$multi_line_string" | /path/to/display-box.sh -s 2 -p 2 -d ,

Usage

Quick example

Deeper dive walk-through of each section:

Step 1)

Include the function

Step 2)

Create two strings that are tab-separated

Step 3)

Optionally define the box style and the padding

Step 4)

Call the display-box function passing in the required $headers and $body variables. Other optional variables are Box Style and Padding

Box Styles

There are several different box styles you can choose between

Type 1 - Single-bars

Type 2 - Double-bars

Type 3 - Double-outer, single-inner

Type 4 - Double-bars without side walls

Type 5 - Double Bars on top and bottom without side walls

Type 6 - Minimal

Examples

There are two example scripts included in the examples directory. The examples/example-all.sh script will display the example in all available styles.

There is also an inline example in examples/example-inline.sh which shows how to pipe in your content.

Future enhancements under consideration

1. Add Colors (borders, background, separate for header/body)
2. Option to add drop-shadow
3. Separate padding-left from padding-right
4. Possibly add different padding for header vs body
5. Option to add bars between each line in body (like Excel)
6. Add style for solid block bars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_Elements)
7. Add style with double-bars for header and single bars for body
8. Add style with double-bars for header and outside but single bars for body columns
9. Add style with only horizontal bars
10. Option to add margin between columns (as opposed to padding) for styles without vertical bars

Versions

Version Number	Date Released	Description of changes
v1.0	30 Apr 2020	Initial version
v1.0.1	22 Mar 2022	Minor bug fix
v1.1	13 May 2023	Added custom delimiter and inline functionality