Align

Align is a small-sized command-line application that can be used to align text within files, in order to create columns. It supports ASCII text files and can identify text separated by commas or white space, thanks to the fact that it features support for CSV files, too.

In fact, if you plan on processing CSV files, you should know that it places the text in columns with two spaces between each column. It's necessary to delimit the input fields using commas or white space. Otherwise, the output file will have poor results due to formatting issues.

If the input fields have spaces, then you can enclose them in single or double quotes or C comments /* ... */ or //. This is necessary to avoid confusion with the space delimiter.

The syntax for the console-based application is simple: "align filename.txt". You just have to specify the name of the plain text document whose contents you want to put into columns.

After hitting the Enter key to trigger this action, the tool shows no additional message, unfortunately, so you have to investigate matters on your own. We've noticed that it doesn't create new files for each processed item.

Instead, it overwrites the original file, replacing it with column-sorted text. This means that it's a pretty solid idea to back up your files prior to using this app. Too bad this isn't specified anywhere when launching it.

In addition to the application itself, you can check out the source code in the downloaded package. Installing Align isn't required since you can copy the unzipped files to a USB flash drive and seamlessly run it on any PC without setup. The piece of software is simple to use by anyone.