# Tbl2xml

> Use when converting tabular text into XML for downstream EDirect or XML-based processing.

- Skill: `vimalinx/tbl2xml` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 2 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add vimalinx/tbl2xml`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/vimalinx/tbl2xml/raw
- Safety review: pending (external: skill-scanner PASS, skillspector PASS)
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: vimalinx (https://skillmd.com/u/vimalinx)
- Updated: 2026-08-19
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/vimalinx/tbl2xml

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# tbl2xml

## Quick Start

- **Command:** `tbl2xml < table.tsv > table.xml`
- **Local executable:** `/home/vimalinx/miniforge3/envs/bio/bin/tbl2xml`
- **Full reference:** See [references/help.md](references/help.md) for complete options and usage

## When To Use This Tool

- Turn table-like text into XML so it can be processed with XML-side tools.
- Bridge text-table intermediate files into the XML-centric parts of an EDirect workflow.
- Normalize tabular annotations before downstream extraction or archiving.

## Common Patterns

```bash
# 1) Convert a tabular text file into XML
tbl2xml < table.tsv > table.xml
```

```bash
# 2) Convert and inspect the first emitted XML blocks
tbl2xml < table.tsv | sed -n '1,40p'
```

## Recommended Workflow

1. Make sure the upstream table really matches the format expected by your workflow.
2. Feed it to `tbl2xml` through stdin redirection or a pipe.
3. Inspect a small sample before converting an entire dataset.
4. Use the resulting XML with downstream `xtract` or reporting steps after that smoke test passes.

## Guardrails

- This wrapper simply runs `transmute -t2x`, so `transmute` must be on `PATH`.
- The installed wrapper does not provide a real `--help` / `--version` interface.
- In this environment, a trivial tabular smoke test produced no output rather than a schema error, so validate on representative data first.
- Prefer stdin/pipes over undocumented positional-file behavior.