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I have a bunch of tabbed (for columns) txt files that I made in TextEdit.
TextEdit is a very simple application though and can't really do a whole lot.
I want to be able to manipulate my columns:
order alphabetically
move column 1 to column 2
add column 3 in between columns 1 and 2
basically
This answer assumes the format is a .txt file with tab-separated values.
Let's start with a file named tsv.txt:
LASTNAME DOB
CHOP 1985-10-24
DOE 1942-04-20
SANTA 1337-12-25
First, I need to open it in LibreOffice Calc. Trying to open it from LibreOffice will trigger the Writer. Instead, I had to right-click the file and choose Open with1.
Calc came up with this window, I only made sure the tabs were checked as separators.
Right click the header of the column where you want to insert one and click Insert Columns Left.
A new column is added. Fill it and save (Ctrl + S). Now tsv.txt's content is the following:
LASTNAME FIRSTNAME DOB
CHOP Cyrille 1985-10-24
DOE Jane 1942-04-20
SANTA Nick 1337-12-25
Select the range to sort, go to Data > Sort and set your parameters:
Save again, and admire your file:
LASTNAME FIRSTNAME DOB
SANTA Nick 1337-12-25
DOE Jane 1942-04-20
CHOP Cyrille 1985-10-24
Basically any data manipulation you can do with a spreadsheet, you can do with Calc on your TSV file. This should meet all your needs.
I think most of the commonly used spreadsheet tools can do just as well. Excel has similar functionalities.
1 I made the demo using Ubuntu, but I guess most of it is easy to transpose to OS X. This link shows how to open a TSV txt file in Calc.
Any spreadsheet with an csv import feature (which allows you to use tabs as the separator rather than commas) will sort you fine. This is the vast majority of spreadsheets such as Microsoft Excel, LibreOffice Calc, OpenOffice Calc etc.
