sed and comma-delimited file

[Freddie Cash]

On Tue, September 19, 2006 9:26 am, SigmaX asdf wrote:
> I have a series of comma-delimited text files with fourteen columns
> of data and several hundred rows.  I want to use a short shell script
> to strip them of the last 9 columns, leaving the same file but with
> just five of its columns.  I can do it in C++, but that seems like
> overkill.  How would I go about doing it with sed or a similar
> utility?

cat file | awk -F"," '{ printf "%s,%s,%s,%s,%s\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5  }' >
newfile

You can probably even remove the cat and just use awk on the file
directly.
----
Freddie Cash
fcash at ocis.net