A commandline, POSIX-compliant logic-less template engine similar to Mustache/Handlebars.

smallstache takes template from commandline argument and key-value data from stdin:

$ echo 'Hello {{ something }}!' >template
$ echo 'something=World' | smallstache template
Hello World!

It can use any source of standard unix key-value data format:

$ echo 'Your PATH variable: {{ PATH }}' >template
$ set | smallstache template
Your PATH variable: /bin:/usr/bin

The instruction is for Linux. On different OSes, you may need to use different commands

1. Download latest stable release from GitHub:

   wget https://github.com/macie/smallstache.sh/releases/latest/download/smallstache

2. (OPTIONAL) Verify downloading:

   wget https://github.com/macie/smallstache.sh/releases/latest/download/smallstache.sha256sum
   sha256sum -c smallstache.sha256sum

3. Set execute permission:

   chmod +x smallstache

4. Move to directory from PATH environment variable:

   mv smallstache /usr/local/bin/

git clone git@github.com:macie/smallstache.sh.git
cd smallstache.sh
make install

Use make (GNU or BSD):

• make - run checks
• make test - run test
• make check - perform static code analysis
• make install - install in /usr/local/bin
• make dist - prepare for distributing
• make clean - remove distributed artifacts
• make cli-release - tag latest commit as a new release
• make info - print system info (useful for debugging).

smallstache is versioned according to the scheme YY.0M.MICRO (calendar versioning). Releases are tagged in Git.

smallstache handles limited length of key-value pairs. When you exceed the limit, you will see an error such as:

smallstache[41]: sed: Argument list too long

As a workaround, fill template in parts with following steps:

# save key-value pairs to a few parts
set >data
split -l 2000 -a 5 data data_part_
# fill the template
cp template result
for part in data_part_*; do
	smallstache result <"$part" >partially_filled
	cp partially_filled result
done
# see the result
cat result

For more information, see ARG_MAX, maximum length of arguments for a new process.

smallstache uses special character to separate key-value pairs in substitution command (default: |). When value contains this character, smallstache will throw an error similar to:

sed: -e expression #1, char 24: unknown option to `s'

In such case, you should use another character as a delimiter, for example: smallstache -d _.

MIT (explanation in simple words)