recutils ☆

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Description:
Tools to work with human-editable, plain text data files

Type: Formula | Latest Version: 1.9@0 | Tracked Since: Oct 15, 2025

Links: Homepage | formulae.brew.sh

Category: Developer tools

Tags: recfiles database cli text-processing gnu

Install: brew install recutils

About:
GNU Recutils provides a suite of command-line utilities to create and manipulate 'recfiles', which are plain text databases designed to be human-readable and editable. It offers tools like 'recsel' for querying and 'recinf' for inspection, enabling structured data management without the overhead of a traditional database server.

Key Features:

Human-readable and editable text database format
Command-line utilities for selection, insertion, and deletion
Support for various data types and constraints
Scriptable and integrates easily with shell pipelines

Use Cases:

Managing structured data like contact lists or inventory in a version control system
Quick data extraction and reporting from text-based datasets in scripts

Alternatives:

SQLite – SQLite offers a more robust, ACID-compliant relational database engine but stores data in a binary format rather than plain text.
CSV files – CSV is a standard for tabular data but lacks native support for complex types, named fields, and querying capabilities.

Version History

Detected	Version	Rev	Change	Commit
Oct 15, 2025 5:03pm		0	VERSION_BUMP	2fdf5ff4
Sep 14, 2024 1:55am		0	VERSION_BUMP	209c5fc8