[9fans] csv files -> embarrasing

["Steve Simon" <steve@quintile.net>]

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