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John Kerl f637633420
Tier-2 structured verb options: OptionSpec, initial migration (#2098) (#2111)
* Tier-2 structured verb options: OptionSpec, initial migration (#2098)

PR 3 of the AI-friendly roadmap (plans/plan-2098-llm.md).

Infrastructure:
- Add OptionSpec{Flag,Arg,Type,Desc,Repeatable,Values} to
  pkg/transformers/aaa_record_transformer.go alongside TransformerSetup.
  Type is one of: bool, string, int, float, csv-list, regex, filename,
  format, enum. For type=="enum", Values lists the valid choices.
- Add Options []OptionSpec to TransformerSetup (nil = not yet migrated).
- Emit Options in VerbInfoForJSON (omitempty so unmigrated verbs stay
  backward-compatible; agents check key presence for Tier-2 availability).
  UsageText is always present as the Tier-1 prose fallback.
- Add VerbOptionsNilCheck() in aaa_verb_options_check.go: progress report
  of migrated vs. unmigrated verbs, analogous to FLAG_TABLE.NilCheck().
- Wire verb-options-nil-check into mlr help (internal/docgen section).

Initial migration (5/70 verbs):
- nothing: empty Options (no verb-specific options, explicitly migrated)
- cat: -n (bool), -N (string), -g (csv-list), --filename, --filenum (bool)
- head: -g (csv-list), -n (int)
- tail: -g (csv-list), -n (int)
- tee: -a, -p (bool)

Tests:
- 5 new unit tests in aaa_transformer_json_test.go covering migrated/
  unmigrated paths, field population, JSON round-trip, and key-presence.
- Regression test case 0003: mlr help verb-options-nil-check golden output.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Migrate all 70 verbs to structured OptionSpec; bump catalog schema to v2

Completes the Tier-2 migration started in the previous commit. Every verb
in TRANSFORMER_LOOKUP_TABLE now has a non-nil Options field.

- Workflow-migrated all 65 remaining verbs. Each Setup var now carries
  Options: []OptionSpec{...} with Flag/Arg/Type/Desc fields. Verbs with
  no verb-specific options (altkv, check, group-like, nothing, etc.) use
  an empty slice to signal "migrated but no options."
- Drop `omitempty` from VerbInfoForJSON.Options: empty slices were silently
  dropped, making migrated-no-option verbs indistinguishable from unmigrated
  ones in JSON. Without omitempty: null=unmigrated, []=migrated-no-options,
  [...]= migrated-with-options. Bump catalogSchemaVersion 1→2 for this shape
  change.
- Replace the two "unmigrated-verb" unit tests (which used stats1 as an
  example) with TestAllVerbsFullyMigrated (asserts every verb has non-nil
  Options) and TestAllVerbsHaveOptionsKeyInJSON (asserts every migrated
  verb emits the "options" key in JSON).
- Regenerate test/cases/cli-help/0003/expout: now reads
  "Verb options migration: 70/70 migrated."

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

* remove a transitional helper

* git rms

* Render verb usage Options blocks from structured OptionSpec

Each verb's usage message and its Tier-2 OptionSpec list previously
duplicated the option text. New WriteVerbOptions (aaa_verb_usage.go)
renders the "Options:" block from the specs: aligned flag column,
descriptions word-wrapped at 80, uniform trailing -h|--help line.

- OptionSpec gains Aliases (JSON "aliases") so long-form spellings
  like join's --lk|--left-keep-field-names survive in both outputs
- All 70 verbs migrated; options literals hoisted to package-level
  vars (usage funcs can't reference their Setup var without a Go
  init cycle)
- Hand-written per-option details the specs had condensed away are
  merged into Desc, enriching the JSON catalog
- Non-option prose (examples, cross-references, dynamic accumulator
  listings) kept verbatim
- Regenerated the six usage-embedding regression expectations and
  the two affected doc pages

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Fix pre-existing usage-text bugs surfaced by the OptionSpec migration

- gap: usage said "One of -f or -g is required" but the parser takes
  -n or -g
- seqgen: drop description line copy-pasted from cat ("Passes input
  records directly to output...") which contradicted "Discards the
  input record stream"
- utf8-to-latin1: description read inverted ("from Latin-1 to UTF-8")
- sec2gmtdate: usage said "../c/mlr" instead of "mlr"
- top: document the accepted-but-undocumented --max flag
- stats2: add linreg-pca to the -a enum values, matching the runtime
  accumulator table

Regression expectations and docs regenerated accordingly.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Fix check usage sentence order; stats1 usage blank line to usage stream

- check: the description's second and third lines were swapped,
  reading "Consumes records without printing any output, / Useful for
  doing a well-formatted check on input data. / with the exception
  that warnings are printed to stderr."
- stats1: a bare fmt.Println() in the usage func wrote its blank line
  to process stdout instead of the usage output stream

Regression expectation and docs regenerated.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Sonnet 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-03 14:27:23 -04:00
.github Bump github/codeql-action/autobuild from 4.36.2 to 4.36.3 (#2126) 2026-07-02 12:15:26 -04:00
cmd Lint round 5+6: staticcheck and errcheck to zero (#2130) 2026-07-03 11:42:08 -04:00
data neaten 2018-02-10 12:37:01 -05:00
docs Tier-2 structured verb options: OptionSpec, initial migration (#2098) (#2111) 2026-07-03 14:27:23 -04:00
man Add a first-class bytes type to the DSL, with b"..." literals and base64/hex codecs (#2122) 2026-07-03 11:58:44 -04:00
pkg Tier-2 structured verb options: OptionSpec, initial migration (#2098) (#2111) 2026-07-03 14:27:23 -04:00
plans Tier-2 structured verb options: OptionSpec, initial migration (#2098) (#2111) 2026-07-03 14:27:23 -04:00
python python/make-tsv.py 2024-02-25 21:56:52 -05:00
scripts Add PNG graphics to perf docs for issue-2084 perf mods (#2095) 2026-06-20 10:39:43 -04:00
snap Snap notes (#1929) 2026-01-02 13:29:41 -05:00
test Tier-2 structured verb options: OptionSpec, initial migration (#2098) (#2111) 2026-07-03 14:27:23 -04:00
tools Add a ./tools/release.sh script (#2043) 2026-04-19 10:43:01 -04:00
vim Fix low hanging fruit typos. (#825) 2022-01-03 13:49:21 -05:00
.all-contributorsrc docs: add schragge as a contributor for doc (#955) 2022-02-21 13:47:36 -05:00
.codespellignore codespell 2022-08-20 09:10:18 -04:00
.gitattributes fix mlr termcvt 2017-05-13 19:37:40 -04:00
.gitignore Simplify positional-indexing syntax in mlr.bnf; push logic to .go source (#2008) 2026-03-04 21:48:09 -05:00
.golangci.yml Lint round 5+6: staticcheck and errcheck to zero (#2130) 2026-07-03 11:42:08 -04:00
.goreleaser.yml Enable windows-arm64 releases. (#2127) 2026-07-02 12:16:53 -04:00
.readthedocs.yaml update ubuntu/python versions in .readthedocs.yaml (#2092) 2026-06-19 17:18:57 -04:00
.vimrc Make TSV finally true TSV (#923) 2022-02-06 00:13:55 -05:00
CLAUDE.md Some fixes for staticcheck (#2006) 2026-03-03 09:27:03 -05:00
configure Don't use sed -I in ./configure (#800) 2021-12-25 00:04:49 -05:00
create-release-tarball update path in create_release_tarball 2023-12-13 18:46:16 -05:00
delve.txt delve.txt 2024-11-23 10:12:13 -05:00
go.mod Bump github.com/klauspost/compress from 1.18.7 to 1.19.0 (#2120) 2026-07-01 09:33:27 -04:00
go.sum Bump github.com/klauspost/compress from 1.18.7 to 1.19.0 (#2120) 2026-07-01 09:33:27 -04:00
LICENSE.txt mlr --help split up (#582) 2021-06-28 00:06:22 -04:00
Makefile yet more staticcheck 2026-03-03 10:17:01 -05:00
miller.spec Prepare 6.19.0 release 2026-06-19 18:28:13 -04:00
README-dev.md docs: document time conversion thread safety (#2115) 2026-07-01 19:04:09 -04:00
README-docs.md Page-refactor for CSV/JSON troubleshooting (#2128) 2026-07-03 10:19:09 -04:00
README-go-port.md Allow "\n" in mlr repl prompt (#1058) 2022-07-12 19:07:11 -04:00
README-profiling.md Update performance docs (#1991) 2026-02-22 17:04:35 -05:00
README-RPM.md Update draft release notes (#743) 2021-11-10 23:59:28 -05:00
README-versions.md README-versions.md 2022-01-10 09:11:27 -05:00
README.md Update DeepWiki badge placement in README.md (#1987) 2026-02-22 15:20:45 -05:00
regression_test.go The package version must match the major tag version (#1654) 2024-09-20 12:10:11 -04:00
todo.txt Replace GOCC parser-generator with PGPG (#2015) 2026-03-15 22:28:57 -04:00

What is Miller?

Miller is like awk, sed, cut, join, and sort for data formats such as CSV, TSV, JSON, JSON Lines, and positionally-indexed.

What can Miller do for me?

With Miller, you get to use named fields without needing to count positional indices, using familiar formats such as CSV, TSV, JSON, JSON Lines, and positionally-indexed. Then, on the fly, you can add new fields which are functions of existing fields, drop fields, sort, aggregate statistically, pretty-print, and more.

cover-art

  • Miller operates on key-value-pair data while the familiar Unix tools operate on integer-indexed fields: if the natural data structure for the latter is the array, then Miller's natural data structure is the insertion-ordered hash map.

  • Miller handles a variety of data formats, including but not limited to the familiar CSV, TSV, and JSON/JSON Lines. (Miller can handle positionally-indexed data too!)

In the above image you can see how Miller embraces the common themes of key-value-pair data in a variety of data formats.

Getting started

deepwiki

More documentation links

Installing

There's a good chance you can get Miller pre-built for your system: Ubuntu Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Fedora Debian Gentoo Pro-Linux Arch Linux NetBSD FreeBSD Anaconda Snap Homebrew/MacOSX MacPorts/MacOSX Chocolatey WinGet

OS Installation command
Linux yum install miller
apt-get install miller
snap install miller
Mac brew install miller
port install miller
Windows choco install miller
winget install Miller.Miller
scoop install main/miller

See also README-versions.md for a full list of package versions. Note that long-term-support (LtS) releases will likely be on older versions.

See also building from source.

Community

GitHub stars Homebrew downloads Conda downloads

All Contributors

Build status

Multi-platform build status CodeQL status Codespell status 🧪 Snap Builds

Building from source

  • First:
    • cd /where/you/want/to/put/the/source
    • git clone https://github.com/johnkerl/miller
    • cd miller
  • With make:
    • To build: make. This takes just a few seconds and produces the Miller executable, which is ./mlr (or .\mlr.exe on Windows).
    • To run tests: make check.
    • To install: make install. This installs the executable /usr/local/bin/mlr and manual page /usr/local/share/man/man1/mlr.1 (so you can do man mlr).
    • You can do ./configure --prefix=/some/install/path before make install if you want to install somewhere other than /usr/local.
  • Without make:
    • To build: go build github.com/johnkerl/miller/v6/cmd/mlr.
    • To run tests: go test github.com/johnkerl/miller/v6/pkg/... and mlr regtest.
    • To install: go install github.com/johnkerl/miller/v6/cmd/mlr@latest will install to GOPATH/bin/mlr.
  • See also the doc page on building from source.
  • For more developer information please see README-dev.md.

For developers

License

License: BSD2

Features

  • Miller is multi-purpose: it's useful for data cleaning, data reduction, statistical reporting, devops, system administration, log-file processing, format conversion, and database-query post-processing.

  • You can use Miller to snarf and munge log-file data, including selecting out relevant substreams, then produce CSV format and load that into all-in-memory/data-frame utilities for further statistical and/or graphical processing.

  • Miller complements data-analysis tools such as R, pandas, etc.: you can use Miller to clean and prepare your data. While you can do basic statistics entirely in Miller, its streaming-data feature and single-pass algorithms enable you to reduce very large data sets.

  • Miller complements SQL databases: you can slice, dice, and reformat data on the client side on its way into or out of a database. You can also reap some of the benefits of databases for quick, setup-free one-off tasks when you just need to query some data in disk files in a hurry.

  • Miller also goes beyond the classic Unix tools by stepping fully into our modern, no-SQL world: its essential record-heterogeneity property allows Miller to operate on data where records with different schema (field names) are interleaved.

  • Miller is streaming: most operations need only a single record in memory at a time, rather than ingesting all input before producing any output. For those operations which require deeper retention (sort, tac, stats1), Miller retains only as much data as needed. This means that whenever functionally possible, you can operate on files which are larger than your systems available RAM, and you can use Miller in tail -f contexts.

  • Miller is pipe-friendly and interoperates with the Unix toolkit.

  • Miller's I/O formats include tabular pretty-printing, positionally indexed (Unix-toolkit style), CSV, TSV, JSON, JSON Lines, and others.

  • Miller does conversion between formats.

  • Miller's processing is format-aware: e.g. CSV sort and tac keep header lines first.

  • Miller has high-throughput performance on par with the Unix toolkit.

  • Miller is written in portable, modern Go, with zero runtime dependencies. You can download or compile a single binary, scp it to a faraway machine, and expect it to work.

What people are saying about Miller

Today I discovered Miller—it's like jq but for CSV: https://t.co/pn5Ni241KM

Also, "Miller complements data-analysis tools such as R, pandas, etc.: you can use Miller to clean and prepare your data." @GreatBlueC @nfmcclure

— Adrien Trouillaud (@adrienjt) September 24, 2020

Underappreciated swiss-army command-line chainsaw.

"Miller is like awk, sed, cut, join, and sort for [...] CSV, TSV, and [...] JSON." https://t.co/TrQqSUK3KK

— Dirk Eddelbuettel (@eddelbuettel) February 28, 2017

Miller looks like a great command line tool for working with CSV data. Sed, awk, cut, join all rolled into one: http://t.co/9BBb6VCZ6Y

— Mike Loukides (@mikeloukides) August 16, 2015

Miller is like sed, awk, cut, join, and sort for name-indexed data such as CSV: http://t.co/1zPbfg6B2W - handy tool!

— Ilya Grigorik (@igrigorik) August 22, 2015

Btw, I think Miller is the best CLI tool to deal with CSV. I used to use this when I need to preprocess too big CSVs to load into R (now we have vroom, so such cases might be rare, though...)https://t.co/kUjrSSGJoT

— Hiroaki Yutani (@yutannihilat_en) April 21, 2020

Miller: a *format-aware* data munging tool By @__jo_ker__ to overcome limitations with *line-aware* workshorses like awk, sed et al https://t.co/LCyPkhYvt9

The project website is a fantastic example of good software documentation!!

— Donny Daniel (@dnnydnl) September 9, 2018

Holy holly data swiss army knife batman! How did no one suggest Miller https://t.co/JGQpmRAZLv for solving database cleaning / ETL issues to me before

Congrats to @__jo_ker__ for amazingly intuitive tool for critical data management tasks!#DataScienceandLaw #ComputationalLaw

— James Miller (@japanlawprof) June 12, 2018

🤯@__jo_ker__'s Miller easily reads, transforms, + writes all sorts of tabular data. It's standalone, fast, and built for streaming data (operating on one line at a time, so you can work on files larger than memory).

And the docs are dream. I've been reading them all morning! https://t.co/Be2pGPZK6t

— Benjamin Wolfe (he/him) (@BenjaminWolfe) September 9, 2021

Contributors

Thanks to all the fine people who help make Miller better (emoji key):


Andrea Borruso

🤔 🎨

Shaun Jackman

🤔

Fred Trotter

🤔 🎨

komosa

🤔

jungle-boogie

🤔

Thomas Klausner

🚇

Stephen Kitt

📦

Leah Neukirchen

🤔

Luigi Baldoni

📦

Hiroaki Yutani

🤔

Daniel M. Drucker

🤔

Nikos Alexandris

🤔

kundeng

📦

Victor Sergienko

📦

Adrian Ho

🎨

zachp

📦

David Selassie

🤔

Joel Parker Henderson

🤔

Michel Ace

🤔

Matus Goljer

🤔

Richard Patel

📦

Jakub Podlaha

🎨

Miodrag Milić

📦

Derek Mahar

🤔

spmundi

🤔

Peter Körner

🛡️

rubyFeedback

🤔

rbolsius

📦

awildturtok

🤔

agguser

🤔

jganong

🤔

Fulvio Scapin

🤔

Jordan Torbiak

🤔

Andreas Weber

🤔

vapniks

📦

Zombo

📦

Brian Fulton-Howard

📦

ChCyrill

🤔

Jauder Ho

💻

Paweł Sacawa

🐛

schragge

📖

Jordi

📖 🤔

This project follows the all-contributors specification. Contributions of any kind are welcome!