tree-sorter

Program for sorting space indented text, treating blocks indented to the same level as groups. This is useful for grouping items in a "to do" list.

e.g.

II Animals
  2 Dogs
  3 Cats
  1 Fish
I Plants
  b Nettles
  c Oak
  a Grass

becomes

I Plants
  a Grass
  b Nettles
  c Oak
II Animals
  1 Fish
  2 Dogs
  3 Cats

Trees of grouped data can be of arbitrary depth.

Usage

$ ./treesorter.py -h
usage: Sort trees [-h] [--SeparateTopLevel] [--InPlace] TreeFile

positional arguments:
  TreeFile            The file containing the tree.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help          show this help message and exit
  --SeparateTopLevel  Separate top level trees with a blank line.
  --InPlace           Write the output on top of the input file.

Examples

The input file might contain a few trees in no particular order:

$ cat fixtures/two-deep-with-gaps.txt
1 one
    i one
    iii one
    ii one

3 three
    iii three
    i three
    ii three

2 two
    ii two
    iii two
    i two

The tool reads the contents of the text file and prints out the trees in order.

$ ./treesorter.py fixtures/two-deep-with-gaps.txt
1 one
    i one
    ii one
    iii one
2 two
    i two
    ii two
    iii two
3 three
    i three
    ii three
    iii three

The --SeparateTopLevel puts a blank line between "top level" trees. This is useful for navigating between groups nimbly in vim.

$ ./treesorter.py fixtures/two-deep-with-gaps.txt --SeparateTopLevel
1 one
    i one
    ii one
    iii one

2 two
    i two
    ii two
    iii two

3 three
    i three
    ii three
    iii three

The --InPlace flag writes the sorted trees on top of the input file.

$ ./treesorter.py ~/docs/todo.txt --SeparateTopLevel --InPlace

In this case, the tool creates a back up file with the extension ".bak" first. Obviously, you've already got other back ups anyway. This is free software. I take no respobsibility for anything that happens to your files. See license.

License

This software is released under the terms of the MIT License.