Exp or Explain

**Exp** short form of **Explain** is a command-line tool that provides detailed information about the contents of a directory or a file. It can be used as an alternative to common Unix commands like `ls` and `cat`, offering additional features such as displaying the top 10 rows of a CSV file and calculating the total sizes of directories and files.

The tool also presents the data in a well-formatted table for easy readability, using pretty printing techniques.

Screenshot

Features

1. Directory Size Information:

   • Shows the total size of a directory and its subdirectories (recursively) along with individual file sizes.
   • Displays folder and file information in a table with size and type details.

2. File Content Display:

   • If a file is specified, the tool will print the contents of the file to the terminal, similar to the cat command.
   • If the file is a CSV, it will display the first 10 rows in a well-formatted table.

3. File Type Detection:

   • Detects the type of file based on its extension and displays it in the output table.

4. Progress Bar:

   • A progress bar is displayed while calculating the size of large directories to track the process.

Installation

Windows:

choco install explain

or download the lastest binary form Here. Add downloaded binary path to environment variable.

Verify Installation: Close the current CMD window and open a new one. Verify that your CLI tool works by typing its name:

explain

If everything is set up correctly, the command should now work globally from any directory.

Linux:

Coming Soon

Mac:

Coming Soon

Manual Build

You need to have Rust installed to build and run this tool.

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/xtareq/explain
   cd explain

2. Build the project:

   cargo build --release

3. Optionally, install the tool globally:

   cargo install --path .

Usage

To use the tool, run the following command:

explain [path]

Examples:

1. View contents of the current directory:

   explain

   This will display the contents of the current directory, showing folders, files, and their sizes.

2. View directory information for a specific path:

   explain /path/to/directory

   This will list all subdirectories and files in the given path, along with their sizes.

3. View file content:

   explain /path/to/file.txt

   This will print the content of the file to the terminal, similar to the cat command.

4. View top 10 rows of a CSV file:

   explain /path/to/file.csv

   This will display the first 10 rows of the CSV file in a tabular format.

Short Alias

You can also use the short alias exp to execute the same commands.

exp [path]

How It Works

• Directory Size Calculation: The program recursively calculates the size of each directory and its subdirectories using fs::read_dir and metadata() to gather file and directory information. It skips any files or directories that cannot be accessed due to permission errors.

• File Type Detection: The program detects file types based on their extensions. It includes a predefined list of common file extensions like .rs for Rust, .py for Python, .jpg for JPEG images, etc.

• CSV Display: If a CSV file is detected, it reads the top 10 rows and displays them in a nicely formatted table using the prettytable crate.

• Progress Bar: The progress bar is shown while the directory size is being calculated. It updates as the program scans each entry in the directory.

Contributing

Feel free to submit pull requests for improvements or bug fixes. Please make sure to run the tests and follow standard Rust coding practices.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.