How to align columnar output in the terminal

In bioinformatics we are handling a lot of tabular data. Be it VCF files, tabular Blast output, or just creating a CSV or TSV samplesheet. Actually, one of my favorite tabular formats is by using SeqKit to convert Fasta or FastQ files to tabular format, as this allows to do various filtering operations by row , using standard unix tools if so wished. Scrolling through this type of data in the terminal can be messy to say the least though. Although CSVs can of course be imported into a spreadsheet software for viewing, it would be very powerful to be able to view them comfortably right from the terminal, isn't it? To take one example that fits within the code window of a blog post, let's take a selected set of columns from the CSV output from the Mykrobe tool. And to make it emulate another common problem with many csv formats, let's also use tr to convert the _ :s in the headers into real spaces (Mykrobe does not do this, but many other tools do): $ cat SOME_SAMPLE.csv | cut -d , -f 2,3,10,14,15,17,18 | tr '_' ' ' > selection.csv $ cat selection.csv "drug" , "susceptibility" , "kmer size" , "phylo group per covg" , "species per covg" , "phylo group depth" , "species depth" "Amikacin" , "S" , "21" , "99.672" , "98.428" , "372" , "347" "Capreomycin" , "S" , "21" , "99.672" , "98.428" , "372" , "347" "Ciprofloxacin" , "S" , "21" , "99.672" , "98.428" , "372" , "347" "Delamanid" , "S" , "21" , "99.672" , "98.428" , "372" , "347" "Ethambutol" , "S" , "21" , "99.672" , "98.428" , "372" , "347" "Ethionamide" , "S" , "21" , "99.672" , "98.428" , "372" , "347" "Isoniazid" , "R" , "21" , "99.672" , "98.428" , "372" , "347" "Kanamycin" , "S" , "21" , "99.672" , "98.428" , "372" , "347" "Levofloxacin" , "S" , "21" , "99.672" , "98.428" , "372" , "347" "Linezolid" , "S" , "21" , "99.672" , "98.428" , "372" , "347" "Moxifloxacin" , "S" , "21" , "99.672" , "98.428" , "372" , "347" "Ofloxacin" , "S" , "21" , "99.672" , "98.428" , "372" , "347" "Pyrazinamide" , "S" , "21" , "99.672"