CSV Rainbow

Rainbow CSV

Main Features

• Rainbow color highlighting for columns in CSV, TSV, semicolon, pipe, whitespace, and custom-separated files
• Built-in SQL-like RBQL language to query, filter, and transform tables instantly
• Column info on hover (index + virtual header support)
• Automatic CSV consistency validation (CSVLint)
• Multi-cursor column editing
• Align columns with spaces or Shrink (trim whitespace)
• Works in vscode.dev (browser) with limited features

Usage

Looks best on dark themes.
If the file doesn’t have a .csv/.tsv extension, click the language name in the bottom-right status bar and pick the correct dialect (CSV, TSV, CSV (semicolon), CSV (pipe), etc.).
Fastest way: select a separator character → right-click → Set as Rainbow separator

Supported separators

Language ID	Separator	Typical extension	Notes
csv	, (comma)	.csv	Ignored inside quoted fields
tsv	TAB	.tsv, .tab
csv (semicolon)	; (semicolon)		Ignored inside quoted fields
csv (whitespace)	whitespace		Consecutive spaces collapsed
csv (pipe)	| (pipe)
dynamic csv	any character or string		User-defined

Automatic separator detection

Runs instantly on all Plain Text and *.csv files (checks only the first few lines).
Can be disabled or customized in extension settings.

Force separator by extension

"files.associations": { ".dat": "csv (pipe)", ".csv": "csv (semicolon)" } textLanguage IDs must be lowercase.

Arbitrary separators

• Choose Dynamic CSV in the status bar → type your separator
• Or select text → run Rainbow CSV: Set separator
  Full RFC-4180 support (quoted multiline fields).

CSVLint

Validates quoting and column count consistency.
Re-run anytime with the CSVLint status bar button.

Large files

Files >300K lines or >20 MB → disable Editor: Large File Optimizations
Files >50 MB → VS Code disables all extensions automatically.

Color customization

Increase contrast (especially useful on light themes):
Customization guide

Align / Shrink

Status bar buttons or commands:
Align – perfect space-padded columns
Shrink – remove leading/trailing whitespace from every field

Commands

• Align / Shrink
• Set separator
• ColumnEdit… (multi-cursor in one column, up to ~10K rows)
• SetVirtualHeader / SetHeaderLine – persistent column names for hover
• RBQL – open the query console
• SetJoinTableName – short alias for JOIN queries

RBQL – SQL-like query language

Columns are referenced as a1, a2, a3…

Example: SELECT a1, a2 * 10 WHERE a1 == "Buy" && a4.includes('oil') ORDER BY Number(a2) DESC LIMIT 100 textEven without SQL knowledge: SELECT a3, a1 extracts columns 3 and 1.

Full docs: https://github.com/codevunmis/vscode_rainbow_csv/blob/master/rbql_core/README.md

Why Rainbow beats traditional alignment

• Zero performance cost
• Maximum data density (no padding spaces)
• Instant column recognition by color
• Easy cross-window column matching

Available in other editors

Vim • Atom • Sublime Text • IntelliJ • Notepad++ • Nano • gedit

Enjoy fast, colorful, and powerful CSV editing! 🚀