q - Text as Data

q is a command line tool that allows direct execution of SQL-like queries on CSVs/TSVs (and any other tabular text files).

q treats ordinary files as database tables, and supports all SQL constructs, such as WHERE, GROUP BY, JOINs, etc. It supports automatic column name and type detection, and q provides full support for multiple character encodings.

q's web site is http://harelba.github.io/q/. It contains everything you need to download and use q immediately.

Installation.

Extremely simple.

Instructions for all OSs are here.

Examples

q "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM ./clicks_file.csv WHERE c3 > 32.3"

ps -ef | q -H "SELECT UID, COUNT(*) cnt FROM - GROUP BY UID ORDER BY cnt DESC LIMIT 3"

Go here for more examples.

Python API

A development branch for exposing q's capabilities as a Python module can be viewed here, along with examples of the alpha version of the API.
Existing functionality as a command-line tool will not be affected by this. Your input will be most appreciated.

Change log

Click here to see the change log.

Contact

Any feedback/suggestions/complaints regarding this tool would be much appreciated. Contributions are most welcome as well, of course.

Harel Ben-Attia, harelba@gmail.com, @harelba on Twitter

q on twitter: #qtextasdata