A few months ago, I posted about headson - my little Rust CLI that works similarly to head/tail, but actually analyzes the structure of the file. So instead of simply giving you the first n bytes, it it balances giving you information about both the structure and the content of the files.
This summarizes the basic concept:
Since then, I added some major new features to headson:
- Support YAML ...
A few months ago, I posted about headson - my little Rust CLI that works similarly to head/tail, but actually analyzes the structure of the file. So instead of simply giving you the first n bytes, it it balances giving you information about both the structure and the content of the files.
This summarizes the basic concept:
Since then, I added some major new features to headson:
- Support YAML files
- Support basically all programming languages: when summarizing a source code file, you get an outline of the file with lines such as function or class definitions being prioritized
- I added a --grep flag: this can be used in various ways, ranging from simply highlighting matches in the summary to using it as a full replacement of grep while maintaining the JSON structure. In other words, you don't need to "make JSON greppable", because with headson you can grep it directly.
- I added a --tree flag: this emulates the output of the tree command, but with the summary of file contents inlined. In other words, a single call of hson can get you a structural summary of an entire git repo in N lines/bytes/characters: from the directory structure all the way down to structure within source code and JSON/YAML files.
- Added glob mode: you can use globs to select which files you want to summarize/search
- Opt-out automatic sorting of files. When working in a git repo, results are sorted by a frecency score based on commits touching that file. This works similarly to how reddit sorts posts, except that there is no heavy penalty for a file being old: recent edits can still bump the file. With this, you can get structural summaries of folders/entire repos that take into account what files are currently most likely to be relevant. When working outside of a git repo, files are sorted by when they were last modified.
- Published Python bindings: headson is heavily optimized to be very fast at summarizing JSON, and the Python bindings allow you to integrate this core capability into APIs, AI agents, etc.
With this, headson is now a versatile structural search/summarization tool supporting various formats, and comes close to taking full advantage of the underlying algorithm and can be used for many use cases.
I am mainly looking for feedback on the project, especially on the way it's presented: is it easy to understand what it is, what it does and how it compares to other alternatives? Is there something that is confusing about it?