Text Utilities

June 24, 2009 9:06 AM

"Text Utilities" is a useful browser-based tool for geeks. It's a web page that does all sorts of operations on text, e.g. escape/ unescape, hashing, regexp testing.
posted by grumblebee (33 comments total)

Sweet! I'll bookmark this. Although I was actually hoping it would be javascript implementations of sed/awk/cut etc.
posted by DU at 9:10 AM on June 24, 2009

This would be so awesome if I knew what hashing, regexp testing, etc. were.
posted by msalt at 9:14 AM on June 24, 2009 [2 favorites]

It does look really cool; I'm forwarding to my geekier friends for their use and translation.
posted by msalt at 9:16 AM on June 24, 2009

msalt, don't do that. They hate when you do that.
posted by Mr. Anthropomorphism at 9:18 AM on June 24, 2009 [1 favorite]

How cute: "Escape" just makes everything URL-appropriate. "Escape" should be at least six different buttons, with a checkbox or two.
posted by gurple at 9:24 AM on June 24, 2009

DU: "Although I was actually hoping it would be javascript implementations of sed/awk/cut etc."

Holy fuck, that would be so awesome.
posted by Plutor at 9:31 AM on June 24, 2009

textop.us is another good one. I've used the Sort Lines, Shuffle Lines, and Delete Duplicate Lines features quite a bit.
posted by burnmp3s at 9:33 AM on June 24, 2009

This is pretty cool. I don't think I'd use it, unfortunately; I keep a Notepad++ open for this sort of thing, and I generally don't like “browser-based applications” since the work I do requires security and privacy. However, it seems like a pretty nifty idea. Thanks, g-bee.
posted by koeselitz at 9:37 AM on June 24, 2009

Finally! A Tool To Easily Allow Me To Do Camel Case! Because There Is Nothing Easier On The Eyes Than A Capitalization Per Word In Any Block Of Text, And Now I Can Employ It Without The RSI Of Having To Hit That Shift Button For Each Individual Example. Slick!
posted by quin at 9:43 AM on June 24, 2009

Thanks for this. I've googled so many times for a base64 encoder/decoder and never bookmarked one until now.
posted by jbiz at 9:45 AM on June 24, 2009

I don't understand the point. I have a shell right here on my desktop; why would I go to the web for this?

(Also, This Is Not Camelcase. This is camelCase.)
posted by ook at 9:50 AM on June 24, 2009 [4 favorites]

Here's sed implemented in javascript.
posted by signalnine at 10:09 AM on June 24, 2009 [1 favorite]

headache relief for programmers :: regular expression generator
posted by shoesfullofdust at 10:10 AM on June 24, 2009 [8 favorites]

Ooo, this is nice. Thank you.
posted by threetoed at 10:13 AM on June 24, 2009

msalt, don't do that. They hate when you do that.

Fair enough. Actually, I was trying to ask, in a cute self-deprecating way, for someone to explain what these functions are, but obviously I didn't get that across.

I do a lot of simple programming in old languages for work, often involving text manipulation, so I was surprised to not understand much of any of this, other than the case manipulation, trim and fix quotes. On a second look, it seems to be mostly encoding and decoding to formats I don't use.

How would the JavaScript functions work, for example? I would love to be able to paste in some VBScript and have it converted to Java but somehow I doubt that would work.
posted by msalt at 10:15 AM on June 24, 2009

WOW! I have forgotten all of the commands that I used to use with emacs and vi...
HEY! I've forgotten more than I know!
(Yeah, yeah, get off my lawn.)
posted by Drasher at 10:16 AM on June 24, 2009

LeetKey is a firefox plugin that does many of the text transformers. I use it quite a bit but mostly just the Morse and ROT13 encoders.
posted by Mitheral at 10:26 AM on June 24, 2009

For the record: msalt sent similar comments to me in a MeMail, and I replied with an apology for making a joke at his expense and provided some explanations for some of the functionality on the linked page.

awww I'm such a swell guy... makin' myself blush over here...
posted by Mr. Anthropomorphism at 10:31 AM on June 24, 2009

shoesfullofdust, that regexp has translated the brain-hurt issues implicate in regexp into ui-hurt issues. Still, I'll give it a crack next time i find myself trying to figure out what subset of regexp is in what editor I am working in.
posted by mwhybark at 10:44 AM on June 24, 2009

VGhpcyUyNTI1MjBpcyUyNTI1MjBnb29kLg==

Hey kids, figure out the secret meaning by clicking all the 'decode' buttons in reverse order!
posted by blue_beetle at 10:52 AM on June 24, 2009

koeselitz: ...I generally don't like “browser-based applications” since the work I do requires security and privacy.

The JavaScript for this particular app is embedded in the page; it's possible to save the page locally as .html or .mht and open/run/use it that way, even without a network connection.
posted by Western Infidels at 10:57 AM on June 24, 2009 [1 favorite]

True. I could do that.

But…is a locally-saved Javascript application really that good for huge (>1000000 rows) dataset transformations?
posted by koeselitz at 11:03 AM on June 24, 2009

Yes, that's exactly what this was designed for.
posted by !Jim at 11:14 AM on June 24, 2009

The JavaScript for this particular app is embedded in the page; it's possible to save the page locally as .html or .mht and open/run/use it that way, even without a network connection.

For extra rube goldberg, you can host it on a web server listening on 127.0.0.1.

Bonus points if you do it in a virtual machine.
posted by Dr Dracator at 12:27 PM on June 24, 2009

ab ebg13? SNVY!
posted by scruss at 12:48 PM on June 24, 2009

The JavaScript for this particular app is embedded in the page; it's possible to save the page locally as .html or .mht and open/run/use it that way, even without a network connection.

For extra rube goldberg, you can host it on a web server listening on 127.0.0.1.Bonus points if you do it in a virtual machine.

Double bonus points if the VM is written in JavaScript.
posted by Songdog at 1:15 PM on June 24, 2009

This is very nicely done, and seems quite useful. However, my current need is for something that will alter line endings between CR-LF and LF and back.
posted by jeffamaphone at 1:50 PM on June 24, 2009

Try flip, makes converting newline characters pretty straightforward.
posted by shoesfullofdust at 2:07 PM on June 24, 2009

headache relief for programmers :: regular expression generator

I'm going to use it to generate a regular expression that gives you a high five for this link.
posted by spiderskull at 3:12 PM on June 24, 2009

This is very nicely done, and seems quite useful. However, my current need is for something that will alter line endings between CR-LF and LF and back.

unix2dos and dos2unix do that.

Webby-Webby!
posted by mikelieman at 7:48 PM on June 24, 2009

Windows-Windows!

I don't like where this is going....
posted by mikelieman at 7:49 PM on June 24, 2009

textop.us is another good one. I've used the Sort Lines, Shuffle Lines, and Delete Duplicate Lines features quite a bit.

However, my current need is for something that will alter line endings between CR-LF and LF and back.

Dudes, BBEdit. Seriously.
posted by rokusan at 10:27 PM on June 24, 2009

I've gotta give my shoutout to Mozilla's Ubiquity yet again, for enabiling me to perform most of these operations on any selected text in any text field on any website.
..- .... -- -- -. ..- -.-.--
posted by potch at 2:57 PM on June 25, 2009