q is a command line tool that allows direct execution of SQL-like queries on CSVs/TSVs (and any other tabular text files).

q treats ordinary files as database tables, and supports all SQL constructs, such as WHERE, GROUP BY, JOINs etc. It supports automatic column name and column type detection, and provides full support for multiple encodings.

q's web site is http://harelba.github.io/q/. It contains everything you need to download and use q in no time.

Extremely simple.

Instructions for all OSs are here.

Go here for more examples.

A development branch for exposing q's capabilities as a Python module can be viewed here, along with examples of the alpha version of the API.
Existing functionality as a command-line tool will not be affected by this. Your input will be most appreciated.

Click here to see the change log.

Any feedback/suggestions/complaints regarding this tool would be much appreciated. Contributions are most welcome as well, of course.

Harel Ben-Attia, [email protected], @harelba on Twitter

q on twitter: #qtextasdata