Re: [9fans] csv files -> embarrasing

["Rogelio Serrano" <rogelio.serrano@gmail.com>]

On 4/28/06, Steve Simon <steve@quintile.net> wrote:
> Ok, I have spent half an hour trying to parse CSV files
> and it's getting embarrasing, I could do it in C but I should
> be able to use rc + sed + awk.
>
> The problem is that some of my CSV files fields contain whitespace
> and thus have double quotes around them.
>
> I thought rc knows about %q quotes strings so I could use it to
> do my parsing, but it fails, can this be done, or is C the answer?
> seems a shame to resort to sledge hammers.
>
> -Steve
>
> cpu% cat file.csv
> a,b,"c,d,e",f,g
> p,q,r,s,t
>
> cpu%
> cpu% cat extract
> #!/bin/rc
>
> sed 's/"([^"]*)"/''\1''/g; s/,/ /g' $* |
>         while (s=`{read})
>                 echo $s(1) $s(3) $s(4)
>
>
> cpu% extract file.csv
> a 'c d
> p r s
>
>

I deal with csv files everyday at work and i just use custom plain c
parsers. Reinventing the wheel and all.

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