cli-width

What is cli-width?

The cli-width package is a simple utility that allows you to retrieve the current width of the command line interface (CLI) in which your node.js application is running. It is useful for creating CLI tools that need to format output according to the width of the terminal window.

What are cli-width's main functionalities?

Get CLI width

This feature allows you to get the current width of the CLI. The function returns a number representing the number of columns in the terminal, or a default value if it can't be determined.

const cliWidth = require('cli-width');
console.log(cliWidth());

Set default width

This feature allows you to set a default width that cli-width will return if it cannot determine the actual width of the terminal. This is useful for ensuring your application has a fallback width to use for formatting output.

const cliWidth = require('cli-width');
cliWidth.defaultWidth = 100;
console.log(cliWidth());

Other packages similar to cli-width

window-size

The window-size package is similar to cli-width in that it provides the dimensions of the terminal window. However, window-size offers both width and height properties, and it can also provide dimensions based on environment variables or stdout/stderr dimensions.

term-size

Term-size is another package that offers similar functionality to cli-width. It provides the size of the terminal as an object with 'columns' and 'rows'. Unlike cli-width, term-size uses a native addon to retrieve terminal dimensions, which may offer more accurate results in some environments.

README

cli-width

Get stdout window width, with four fallbacks, tty, output.columns, a custom environment variable and then a default.

Tested against Node v12 to v20. Includes TypeScript types.

Usage

npm install --save cli-width

const cliWidth = require('cli-width');

cliWidth(); // maybe 204 :)

You can also set the CLI_WIDTH environment variable.

If none of the methods are supported, and the environment variable isn't set, the default width value is going to be 0, that can be changed using the configurable options.

API

cliWidth([options])

cliWidth can be configured using an options parameter, the possible properties are:

• defaultWidth<number> Defines a default value to be used if none of the methods are available, defaults to 0
• output<object> A stream to be used to read width values from, defaults to process.stdout
• tty<object> TTY module to try to read width from as a fallback, defaults to require('tty')

Examples

Defining both a default width value and a stream output to try to read from:

const cliWidth = require('cli-width');
const ttys = require('ttys');

cliWidth({
  defaultWidth: 80,
  output: ttys.output,
});

Defines a different tty module to read width from:

const cliWidth = require('cli-width');
const ttys = require('ttys');

cliWidth({
  tty: ttys,
});

Tests

npm install
npm test

Coverage can be generated with npm run coverage.