Graphviz and ascii output

Question

Is it possible to draw ASCII diagram using Graphviz?

Something like that:

digraph
{
  this -> is
  this -> a
  a -> test
}

Gives undesired result.

Instead, I would like to get similar ASCII representation:

   this
  /    \
is      a
        |
       test

How to draw ascii diagrams from dot-files format?

Answer 1

If you are not perl averse, graph-easy (and the associated Graph::Easy package) can do exactly that:

http://search.cpan.org/~tels/Graph-Easy/

http://search.cpan.org/~tels/Graph-Easy/bin/graph-easy

On Mac you can install this with Homebrew and cpan:

brew install cpanminus
cpan Graph::Easy

It's easy to invoke after installation:

cat dotfile.dot   | /opt/local/libexec/perl5.12/sitebin/graph-easy

Answer 2

Here is equivalent commands for linux:

First install cpanminus

sudo apt install cpanminus

After you can install GraphEasy

sudo cpanm Graph::Easy

Here is a sample usage

cat input.dot | graph-easy --from=dot --as_ascii

Answer 3

Using graph-easy via docker. You can install whalebrew and use it to run graph-easy without installing too much dependancies on your local machine other than whalebrew and docker.

on MacOS with homebrew install docker

$ brew install docker
$ docker -v      # check if docker is running

Install whalebrew - https://github.com/whalebrew/whalebrew (check installation alternatives)

$ brew install whalebrew

Install graph-easy via whalebrew

$ whalebrew install tsub/graph-easy

Now run it via

$ echo '[a]->[b]' | graph-easy

+---+     +---+
| a | --> | b |
+---+     +---+

Answer 4

By now, in ubuntu, you can install and use graph-easy directly:

> sudo apt install libgraph-easy-perl
[...]

> graph-easy dotfile.dot 
+----+     +------+
| is | <-- | this |
+----+     +------+
             |
             |
             v
           +------+
           |  a   |
           +------+
             |
             |
             v
           +------+
           | test |
           +------+

Answer 5

Another option to use Graph::Easy's ASCII functionality is directly from your browser through this small service that I hosted:

https://dot-to-ascii.ggerganov.com