{"id":6239,"library":"simple-ascii-tables","title":"Simple ASCII Tables","description":"A simple, minimal, and dependency-free Python package for generating ASCII tables. It is a simplified fork of the unmaintained `terminaltables` library, focusing on basic usage without the complexity or external dependencies of other table formatting solutions. The current version is 1.0.1, released on January 23, 2025.","status":"active","version":"1.0.1","language":"en","source_language":"en","source_url":"https://github.com/g-battaglia/simple-ascii-tables","tags":["ascii","table","cli","terminal","formatting","no-dependencies"],"install":[{"cmd":"pip install simple-ascii-tables","lang":"bash","label":"Install with pip"}],"dependencies":[],"imports":[{"symbol":"AsciiTable","correct":"from simple_ascii_tables import AsciiTable"}],"quickstart":{"code":"from simple_ascii_tables import AsciiTable\n\ntable_data = [\n    ['Heading 1', 'Heading 2', 'Heading 3'],\n    ['Row 1, Col 1', 'Row 1, Col 2', 'Row 1, Col 3'],\n    ['Row 2, Col 1', 'Row 2, Col 2', 'Row 2, Col 3 that is very long and wraps'],\n    ['Short', 'Medium Text', 'Longer Text Here']\n]\n\ntable = AsciiTable(table_data)\n# Optional: Set a title\ntable.title = \"My Simple Table\"\n\n# Optional: Customize borders (inherits from terminaltables)\n# table.inner_column_border = False\n# table.outer_border = False\n\nprint(table.table)","lang":"python","description":"This quickstart demonstrates how to create a basic ASCII table using `AsciiTable`. Provide your data as a list of lists of strings. The outer list represents the table, and each inner list represents a row. The first inner list typically serves as the header. You can optionally set a title and customize various border elements."},"warnings":[{"fix":"Review the source code or experiment to confirm feature availability if migrating from `terminaltables` or requiring specific advanced formatting.","message":"This library is a simplified fork of `terminaltables` and aims for minimalism. It may not support all advanced features found in `terminaltables` (e.g., different border styles like single or double lines using Unicode box-drawing characters, which were available in `SingleTable` or `DoubleTable` in the original library).","severity":"gotcha","affected_versions":"All versions"},{"fix":"For tables requiring rich text, colors, or accurate rendering of wide Unicode characters, consider libraries like `Rich` or `prettytable` which are designed for more advanced terminal output. Test thoroughly with diverse character sets if using this library for non-basic ASCII content.","message":"As a purely ASCII-based table generator, `simple-ascii-tables` may have limited or no robust support for wide Unicode characters (e.g., emojis, CJK characters) or ANSI escape codes for coloring. Such characters often have a display width greater than one, which can cause misalignments in fixed-width ASCII tables.","severity":"gotcha","affected_versions":"All versions"},{"fix":"Pre-process data into lists of strings before passing to `AsciiTable`. If advanced data manipulation, formatting, or export options are needed, consider a more feature-rich library.","message":"The library is designed to be dependency-free. While beneficial for light-weight applications, this means it explicitly does not include features often found in larger table-generation libraries, such as automatic data type handling, sorting, HTML/JSON output, or complex cell styling. Data should be pre-formatted as strings.","severity":"gotcha","affected_versions":"All versions"}],"env_vars":null,"last_verified":"2026-04-14T00:00:00.000Z","next_check":"2026-07-13T00:00:00.000Z"}