output.md

Output & Formatting

Terminal Output

By default, all chart functions print directly to the terminal with ANSI color codes. The output is rendered immediately when the function is called.

tpl.bar(["A", "B"], [10, 20], color="green")
# Prints colored bar chart to stdout

File Output

Pass output_file="path.txt" to save the chart to a file. ANSI color codes are automatically stripped from the file content.

tpl.bar(["A", "B"], [10, 20], color="green", output_file="chart.txt")
# Saves clean text without ANSI codes to chart.txt

This works on all chart types.

Figure Output

Use the Figure class to compose multiple charts into one output:

fig = tpl.Figure(title="Report")
fig.add_chart(tpl.bar, ["A", "B"], [10, 20], max_width=40)
fig.add_chart(tpl.pie, ["X", "Y"], [30, 70])
fig.render()                          # print to terminal
fig.savefig("report.txt")             # save to file (ANSI stripped)

ANSI Strip Behavior

• File output: all ANSI escape codes (\033[...m) are removed
• Terminal output: ANSI codes are preserved for colored display
• The strip_ansi() utility is available for custom use

clean = tpl.strip_ansi("\033[31mHello\033[0m")  # "Hello"

Output Files Generated

The project's .gitignore excludes common generated output files (*.txt in the root) to prevent accidental commits.