GRAPH-EASY(1)

📦

version 0.76 · 3 versions

💖 NAME 💖

graph-easy — render/convert graphs in/from various formats

Okay bestie, this is GRAPH-EASY(1) from the User Contributed Perl Documentation section, and it's literally the graph tool that does everything. Sit down, hydrate, let's go. 🫶

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

Convert between graph formats and layout/render graphs, no cap:

graph-easy [options] [inputfile [outputfile]]

echo "[ Bonn ] - car -> [ Berlin ]" | graph-easy
graph-easy --input=graph.dot --as_ascii
graph-easy --html --output=mygraph.html graph.txt
graph-easy graph.txt graph.svg
graph-easy graph.txt --as_dot | dot -Tpng -o graph.png
graph-easy graph.txt --png
graph-easy graph.vcg --dot
graph-easy graph.dot --gdl
graph-easy graph.dot --graphml

🌈 ARGUMENTS 🌈

These are the most important options, and there's more lurking in the full documentation. Here's the whole crew:

--help — prints the full documentation, not just this little short overview. Ask for the whole lore. 📖
--input — specify the input file name. Like:

graph-easy --input=input.txt

The format gets auto-detected, and you can override it with --from.

--output — specify the output file name. Like:

graph-easy --output=output.txt input.txt

--as — specify the output format. Like:

graph-easy --as=ascii input.txt

Valid formats are:

ascii — ASCII art rendering
boxart — Unicode Boxart rendering
html — HTML
svg — Scalable Vector Graphics
graphviz — the DOT language
dot — alias for "graphviz"
txt — Graph::Easy text
vcg — VCG (Visualizing Compiler Graphs - a subset of GDL) text
gdl — GDL (Graph Description Language) text
graphml — GraphML

Plus, these following formats are understood and piped through the program you pick with the --renderer option (default: dot):

bmp — Windows bitmap
gif — GIF
hpgl — HP-GL/2 vector graphic
jpg — JPEG
pcl — PCL printer language
pdf — PDF
png — PNG
ps — Postscript
ps2 — Postscript with PDF notations (see graphviz documentation)
tga — Targa bitmap
tif — TIFF bitmap

The default format is determined by the output filename extension, and it's "ascii" if the output filename wasn't set. iykyk.

You can also use ONE argument of the form --as_ascii or --ascii. One. Singular. Choose wisely bestie. 💅

--from — specify the input format. Valid formats are:
- graphviz — the DOT language
- txt — Graph::Easy text
- vcg — VCG text
- gdl — GDL (Graph Description Language) text

If you don't specify it, the input format is auto-detected. She just knows. ✨

You can also use ONE argument of the form --from_dot, etc.

--renderer — the external program (default: dot) used to render the output formats like png, jpg etc. Some choices are neato, twopi, fdp or circo. Pick your fighter. 🥊
--parse — input will only be parsed, without any output generation. Super useful in combination with --debug=1 or --stats. Example:

graph-easy input.txt --parse --debug=1

--stats — write various statistics about the input graph to STDERR. Best used in combination with --parse:

graph-easy input.txt --parse --stats

--timeout — set the timeout in seconds for the Graph::Easy layouter that generates ASCII, HTML, SVG or boxart output. If the layout doesn't finish in this time, it will be aborted. Example:

graph-easy input.txt --timeout=500

Conversion to DOT, VCG/GDL, GraphML or plain text ignores the timeout.

The default is 240 seconds (4 minutes). That's a whole skincare routine, so use it wisely.

--verbose — write info regarding the conversion process to STDERR.

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

graph-easy reads a description of a graph (a connected network of nodes and edges, not a pie chart :-) and then converts this to the desired output format.

By default, the input is read from STDIN, and the output goes to STDOUT. The input is expected to be encoded in UTF-8, and the output will also be UTF-8. Consistent. Iconic. 👑

It understands the following formats as input:

Graph::Easy  http://bloodgate.com/perl/graph/manual/
DOT          http://www.graphviz.org/
VCG          http://rw4.cs.uni-sb.de/~sander/html/gsvcg1.html
GDL          http://www.aisee.com/

The formats are automatically detected, regardless of the input file name, but you can also explicitly declare your input to be in one specific format.

The output can be a dump of the graph in one of the following formats:

Graph::Easy  http://bloodgate.com/perl/graph/manual/
DOT          http://www.graphviz.org/
VCG          http://rw4.cs.uni-sb.de/~sander/html/gsvcg1.html
GDL          http://www.aisee.com/
GraphML      http://graphml.graphdrawing.org/

In addition, Graph::Easy can also create layouts of graphs in one of the following output formats:

HTML   SVG   ASCII   BOXART

Heads up bestie: for SVG output, you need to install the module Graph::Easy::As_svg first. No module, no SVG, that's the rule. 🎀

As a shortcut, you can also specify the output format as 'png' — this will cause graph-easy to pipe the input in graphviz format to the dot program to create a PNG file in one step. The following two examples are equivalent:

graph-easy graph.txt --dot | dot -Tpng -o graph.png
graph-easy graph.txt --png

💜 OTHER ARGUMENTS 💜

graph-easy supports a few more arguments in addition to the ones from above:

--version — write version info and exit. Short, sweet, slays.
--debug=N — set the debug level (1..3). Warning, this will generate huge amounts of hard to understand output on STDERR. Not me flooding your terminal 💀. Example:

graph-easy input.txt --output=test.html --debug=1

--png, --dot, --vcg, --gdl, --txt, --ascii, --boxart, --html, --svg — given exactly one of these options, produces the desired output format. Exactly one. Don't be greedy. ✋

🌟 EXAMPLES 🌟

🎨 ASCII output

echo "[ Bonn ] -- car --> [ Berlin ], [ Ulm ]" | graph-easy

+--------+  car   +-----+
|  Bonn  | -----> | Ulm |
+--------+        +-----+
  |
  | car
  v
+--------+
| Berlin |
+--------+

🎨 Graphviz example output

echo "[ Bonn ] -- car --> [ Berlin ], [ Ulm ]" | graph-easy --dot
digraph GRAPH_0 {

  edge [ arrowhead=open ];
  graph [ rankdir=LR ];
  node [
    fontsize=11,
    fillcolor=white,
    style=filled,
    shape=box ];

  Bonn -> Ulm [ label=car ]
  Bonn -> Berlin [ label=car ]

}

🎨 VCG example output

echo "[ Bonn ] -- car --> [ Berlin ], [ Ulm ]" | graph-easy --vcg
graph: {
  title: "Untitled graph"

  node: { title: "Berlin" }
  node: { title: "Bonn" }
  node: { title: "Ulm" }

  edge:  { label: "car" sourcename: "Bonn" targetname: "Ulm" }
  edge:  { label: "car" sourcename: "Bonn" targetname: "Berlin" }

}

🎨 GDL example output

GDL (Graph Description Language) is a superset of VCG, and thus the output will look almost the same as VCG:

echo "[ Bonn ] -- car --> [ Berlin ], [ Ulm ]" | graph-easy --gdl
graph: {
  title: "Untitled graph"

  node: { title: "Berlin" }
  node: { title: "Bonn" }
  node: { title: "Ulm" }

  edge:  { label: "car" source: "Bonn" target: "Ulm" }
  edge:  { label: "car" source: "Bonn" target: "Berlin" }

}

🎨 GraphML example output

GraphML is XML:

echo "[ Bonn ] -- car --> [ Berlin ], [ Ulm ]" | graph-easy --graphml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<graphml xmlns="http://graphml.graphdrawing.org/xmlns"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://graphml.graphdrawing.org/xmlns
     http://graphml.graphdrawing.org/xmlns/1.0/graphml.xsd">

  <!-- Created by Graph::Easy v0.58 at Mon Aug 20 00:01:25 2007 -->

  <key id="d0" for="edge" attr.name="label" attr.type="string"/>

  <graph id="G" edgedefault="directed">
    <node id="Berlin">
</node>
    <node id="Bonn">
</node>
    <node id="Ulm">
</node>
    <edge source="Bonn" target="Berlin">
      <data key="d0">car</data>
</edge>
    <edge source="Bonn" target="Ulm">
      <data key="d0">car</data>
</edge>
  </graph>
<graphml>

😭 CAVEATS 😭

Okay so real talk, please note that it is impossible to convert 100% from one format to another format, since every graph language out there has features that are unique to only this language. Every format is special in its own way, and that's valid. 🦄

In addition, the conversion process always converts the input first into an Graph::Easy graph, and then to the desired output format. Everything goes through the middle. It's giving airport layover. ✈️

This means that only features and attributes that are actually valid in Graph::Easy are supported yet. Work in making Graph::Easy an universal format supporting as much as possible is still in progress. It's a journey, not a destination. 🌱

Attributes that are not yet supported natively by Graph::Easy are converted to custom attributes with a prefixed "x-format-", f.i. "x-dot-". Upon output to the same format, these are converted back, but conversion to a different format will lose these attributes. So like, they don't survive the trip. 💀

For a list of what problems still remain, please see the TODO file in the "Graph::Easy" distribution on CPAN:

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

If you notice anything wrong, or miss attributes, please file a bug report on

<http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=Graph-Easy>

so we can fix it and include the missing things into Graph::Easy! Besties help besties fix bugs. 🫶

📜 LICENSE 📜

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GPL.

See the LICENSE file of Graph::Easy for a copy of the GPL.

This product includes color specifications and designs developed by Cynthia Brewer (<http://colorbrewer.org/>). See the LICENSE file for the full license text that applies to these color schemes.

👑 AUTHOR 👑

…and that's part one, bestie — there's more coming, so don't go anywhere. 💖

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

okay bestie, if you wanna go deeper (and I know you do 🫶), there's a whole online manual for Graph::Easy waiting for you:

<http://bloodgate.com/perl/graph/manual/>

and like, obviously, you should also go say hi to these two legends:

Graph::Easy 💖
Graph::Easy::Manual 📖

and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🎀 you made it to the end, which is giving main character energy fr fr 💅

this lil masterpiece is from perl v5.42.0 ✨ and it got its glow-up on 2025-07-25 🌸 so yeah, that's the vibe, that's the date, periodt 👑

now go draw some iconic graphs, you absolute queen 👑💜

📦 where this page comes from

fedora 43: perl-Graph-Easy 0.76-27.fc43 · GPL-2.0-or-later AND Apache-1.1
💖 girlified by deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash on 2026-10-13: a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms