TxtAn

TxtAn offers simplistic means for CLI users to analyze the contents of their TXT files, all from within the comfort of your favorite application and with reduced user input.

An open-source project and how to use TxtAn

This program is written in Pascal, and it is free of cost. Being accessible through a command line of your choice, the tool is compatible with older Windows OS versions as well. Moreover, this tool comes in a zip archive that contains two executables, for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.

Using this application can be done in several steps: first, you unzip the package. Second, you open your CLI with admin privileges, go to the location of your TxtAn executables (e.g., C:\Users\My_User\Desktop\TxtAn) and input the executable compatible with your system architecture, followed by the referencing of the text file you want to analyze. For example, the text file can be in the same folder or in a different location. You can reference it by its path, like this C:\Users\My_User\Downloads\my_file.txt.

A regular TxtAn call should look like this .\TxtAn64.exe C:\Users\APL\Desktop\my_file.txt.

What information will this tool provide for its users?

If executed correctly, this simple application provides you with information such as the number of processed files in one call, the total size of the content that has been processed, and the overall text, blank, and written (non-blank) lines that have been analyzed.

Getting help for this tool is extremely easy. As with most CLI tools, all you must do is go to the directory where the application is kept and write .\TxtAn64.exe followed by -h or --help. As a result, you will see the available methods for this program.

Additional input arguments that you could use are -r (for recurse depth customized; e.g. input a certain number for the recursive calls conducted on subdirectories), -s (displaying no details, just a summary), -isfl (ignoring symbolic links to your target files), -idsl (ignoring symbolic links to directories).