Any line of text in the recipe is treated as a column definition unless it corresponds with any of the following exclusions …

• Lines that are directives
• Blank or empty lines
• Lines starting with // which are treated as comments

The simplest column definition is a string, for instance a line reading hello world will cause this string to be used as the value for a column on every row of the output. The left-most column is defined first when reading the recipe from top-to-bottom.

Variables

Variables are declared in the variables pane and can be reused as often as is needed.

Declare a variable by typing key = value in the variables pane. Use a variable by including $key in the recipe to see value in the CSV output.

CSVs created using only strings and variables will be quite boring since all the rows will be the same. Patterns are one way of introducing randomised or dynamic content, particularly concerned with strings such as serial or telephone numbers, codes strings, vehicle registrations, and so on.

Using patterns

Patterns are declared in the variables pane in the normal fashion.

foo = {111}-{AAA*}

To include the output of a pattern in a column of the CSV, invoke it with %. Invoking a pattern with $ will do so as if it were a variable and will simply reproduce its definition.

%foo

When invoked with %, the pattern text is included verbatim but …

• any 1 character appearing between a { and a } will be replaced with a random digit.
• any A character appearing between a { and a } will be replaced with a random uppercase letter.
• any * character appearing between a { and a } will be replaced with a random digit or uppercase letter.

Thus, the example foo above might become any of the following in the output …

• 123-ABC1
• 443-QRTX
• 263-BHCH
• 881-LIM9