
Show HN: Poor Fox – A beautiful CLI app for keeping track of your expenses - diegomacario
https://github.com/diegomacario/Poor-Fox
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diegomacario
Hi everyone! I worked on this side project for a few months. I tried to make
it as easy to use / visually appealing as possible. I have been using it for
the past couple of months and it has really helped me be more conscious about
my spending. I hope it can do the same for you. Thank you for checking it out!

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penname64
Simply beautiful! Thank you! I've been looking for something lightweight like
this for a long time. It's hard to find this sort of application without so
much useless bloat. An elegant solution which will be easily extensible with
my own scripts as needed. Nice job.

~~~
diegomacario
Thank you! I am still refactoring the code (there are a few hacks that I am
not proud of). I hope it will be useful!

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ezekg
Question: if it's written in C, why does it require Chalk, a JS lib?

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diegomacario
It is actually written in C++. Github says C because the SQLite files are a
lot bigger than the ones I wrote. And Chalk is used because in the following
way:

\- The application creates a file called pfox_console_printout.js, which is
hidden in your home directory.

\- It writes the tables/graph line by line into that file. Each line starts
with 'console.log(' or 'process.stdout.write(' and ends appropriately.

\- When it is done writing it executes 'node pfox_console_printout.js' and all
the data is displayed.

The reason I went through the trouble of doing all that is to have Windows
support. I had a lot of issues with Unicode characters and with changing the
colors of text in a way that worked in Unix and Windows. I also think that
using Chalk simplifies the process of changing the colors, which will prove
useful when I start supporting new color schemes!

