ASPARK README

aspark is a C program to display ASCII Sparklines. It is completely useless in 2011.

It is a bloated versions of https://github.com/holman/spark and is intended for Enterprise Companies.

Basic usage

The program has different operation modes to get data in different ways. The simplest default operation mode is getting data from the command line:

$ ./aspark 1,2,3,4,10,7,6,5 -_ __- `

By default the program prints graphs using two rows. For better resolution you can change this using the --rows option:

$ ./aspark 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,10,8,5,3,1 --rows 4 -``
- _- `

Sometimes graphs are more readable if the area under the curve is filled, so a --fill option is provided:

$ ./aspark 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,10,8,5,3,1 --rows 4 --fill o##
_#|||||
o#|||||||#
o#||||||||||#

It is possible to use labels, specifying them using a ':' character followed by the label in the list of comma separated values, like in the following example:

$ ./aspark '1,2,3,4,5:peak,4,3,1,0:base' --_ - -

p   b
e   a
a   s
k   e

Sometimes a logarithmic scale is to be preferred since difference betwen values can be too big:

$ ./aspark 1,2,3,10,50,100 ____

$ ./aspark 1,2,3,10,50,100 --log - __-

Stream mode

In stream mode data is read form standard input, one value per each line:

$ echo -e "1\n2\n3\n" | ./aspark --stream _` _

In this mode it is still possible to use labels, using a space and the label after the actual value, like in the following example:

$ echo -e "1\n2 foo\n3\n" | ./aspark --stream _` _

f o o

In stream mode it is often interesting to pipe data form other programs:

$ ruby -e '(1..40).each{|x| print Math.sin(x/2),"\n"}' | ./aspark --stream --rows 4 --fill

## ##

||||__ ||||## ##|||| | #|||||| oo|||||| ||||||oo ||| |||||||oo||||||||##__##||||||||__oo|||

Characters frequency mode

The last mode is enabled usign --txtfreq or --binfreq options. It is used to create a frequency table of the data received from standard input:

$ cat /etc/passwd | ./aspark --txtfreq --fill --rows 4 o # # _
| | # | |#_
| | |_ | # #o |||_
#|#|||##|#o||||||_|||||_#_

!"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

You can see the frequency of every single byte using --binfreq.

Check aspark --help for more information about the usage.

Author

aspark was developed by Salvatore Sanfilippo [email protected] during a few hours of complete relax. Since it is completely useless it will not be further developed by the author.