Increasing information density with ASCII art

As the title of this section states, you can increase information density using ASCII art. For example, running the ls command shows file permissions in a way a user can easily scan with their eyes and understand with pattern recognition. Also, using a highlighter pen when studying in a textbook to literally highlight a sentence or group of words makes certain phrases jump out as more important. In this section, we’ll talk about some common uses for ASCII art to increase the understanding of the importance of shared information.

Displaying information with tables

Probably the clearest way that data can be displayed to users is in a table format. Just like the ls format, patterns can jump out more easily in a table format. Sometimes records can contain data that is longer than the width of the screen and lines become wrapped. This can break scripts that might be relying on one record per line.

Let’s take our audiofile...