GNU bug report logs - #6277
cut: Please add CSV parsing

Previous Next

Full log

Message #8 received at 6277 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Pádraig Brady <P <at> draigBrady.com>
To: sandy bas <basic207 <at> gmail.com>
Cc: 6277 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#6277: cut
Date: Thu, 27 May 2010 16:08:35 +0100

On 27/05/10 04:00, sandy bas wrote:
> Dear People:
> 
> Comma delimited files often have fields of the form "big,black,bear" where the
> commas within the quotes are not delimiters. A useful option in cut would
>  be to ignore the commas (delimiters) within the quotation marks.
> 
>   I would be glad to put it in if you would like the option.

Hmm, the CSV format is a bit more complicated than that
so as to support " and \n within fields also.
It would be more general I think to have a separate tool
to parse CSV to a format more easily usable on the shell,
and that it turn could be passed to cut -d, column -s, ...

Aha, the csvutils command from here seems to do this:
http://freshmeat.net/projects/csvutils

cheers,
Pádraig.

Previous Next

GNU bug tracking system
Copyright (C) 1999 Darren O. Benham, 1997,2003 nCipher Corporation Ltd, 1994-97 Ian Jackson.