Prism CSV
Open CSV/TSV files in VS Code as a fast, colorful table, and edit them in place. No dependencies, smooth with hundreds of thousands of rows.
The interface is in English by default and switches to Turkish when VS Code's display language is Turkish. · Türkçe
Features
- In-cell editing: Double-click, press
Enter or F2, or just start typing. Enter commits and moves down, Tab moves right, Shift/Alt+Enter inserts a line break, Esc cancels.
- Formatting is preserved: Only the edited field changes in the file. Quotes, line endings and other cells stay exactly as they were.
- Bulk actions:
Delete clears the selected cells. Ctrl+V pastes a block copied from Excel starting at the selected cell; a single value fills the whole selection.
- Move columns: Drag a header to a new position; every row in the file is reordered.
- Rename columns: Use Rename in the column menu to change the header row.
- Save: The Save button lights up when there are changes (
Ctrl+S works too). Undo/redo buttons and Ctrl+Z/Ctrl+Y use VS Code's own history. Unsaved cells are marked with an amber bar.
- Colored columns: Each column gets its own color, tuned for light and dark themes. Choose Text, Background or Off in the View menu.
- Sorting: Click a header to sort ascending, again for descending, a third time to clear. Shift+click sorts by multiple columns. Numbers, dates and text sort correctly for your locale.
- Column filters: Type an expression in the box under each header (see the table below).
- Value lists: The column menu (⌄) has Excel-style checkable values with counts and an "only" button.
- Global search:
Ctrl+F, with match-case and regex options; matches are highlighted.
- Statistics: The column menu shows filled, empty and distinct counts, plus sum, min, max, average and a histogram for numbers and the range for dates.
- Selection: Click, Shift+click or drag to select. The status bar shows sum, average, min and max.
Ctrl+C copies as TSV, ready to paste into Excel.
- Row details: Press
Space or double-click a row number to see every field of a row; JSON values are pretty-printed.
- Auto-detection: Delimiter (
, ; tab |), number format (1,234.56 or 1.234,56) and date format (ISO, dd.mm.yyyy). Column types can be overridden from the menu.
- Export: Save the filtered view to a file, or copy it as CSV, TSV, Markdown or JSON.
- Live updates: The table follows changes made in the text editor.
- Encodings: For files that are not UTF-8, a likely encoding is suggested based on your language; others can be picked from a menu.
Filter syntax
| Type |
Meaning |
london |
contains |
=London / !=London |
equals / not equal |
!cancelled |
does not contain |
>100, >=100, <5, <=5 |
compare (number, date or text) |
10..50, 2024-01-01..2024-03-31 |
range |
^SP-1 / com$ |
starts with / ends with |
/^\d{3}$/i |
regular expression |
= / != |
empty / not empty |
a \| b, >10 & <20 |
or / and |
Keyboard
| Key |
Action |
Ctrl+F |
search |
Arrows, PageUp/Down, Home/End |
navigate (Ctrl jumps to the edge) |
Shift + arrows |
extend selection |
Ctrl+A / Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V |
select all / copy / paste |
Enter, F2, double-click, typing |
edit cell |
Delete / Backspace |
clear selected cells |
Ctrl+S / Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y |
save / undo / redo |
Space |
toggle row details |
Esc |
cancel edit, close menu, panel or selection |
Installation
Build the VSIX (or download it from the artifacts of the latest CI run) and install it:
npm run package
code --install-extension prism-csv-1.0.0.vsix
CSV files then open in the table automatically. Use Open as text in the toolbar (or Reopen Editor With…) to switch back to the text editor.
Development
No dependencies to install; Node.js 20+ is enough.
- Sample data:
npm run sample generates dev/sample.csv (5,000 rows, not committed). npm run sample -- --tr generates a Turkish-formatted dev/sample-tr.csv (;, 1.234,56, dd.mm.yyyy). node dev/make-sample.js 300000 dev/big.csv generates a large file.
- Debug: Open the folder in VS Code and press
F5; the Extension Development Host opens dev/.
- Browser preview: Run
npm run preview and open http://localhost:5178 (shows dev/sample.csv). Add ?lang=tr for Turkish, ?light for the light theme, ?file=/dev/big.csv for another file.
- Tests:
npm test (parsing, cell edits, column moves) and npm run check-l10n (translations). CI runs both on every push and pull request.
- Screenshot: With the preview running,
npm run screenshot regenerates docs/screenshot.png using headless Chrome or Edge.
Strings are written in English in the code. Translations live in l10n/bundle.l10n.<lang>.json (UI and extension messages) and package.nls.<lang>.json (commands and settings); adding a language means adding those two files.
The parser and edit logic live in media/csv-core.js and are shared by the webview and the extension. Editing is disabled on read-only file systems (e.g. git diffs) and when a custom encoding is used.
Contributing
Issues and pull requests are welcome. Please run npm test and npm run check-l10n before opening a pull request.
License
MIT © Emre Kesler
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