tab-delimited to csv

[Polytropon]

On Mon, 16 Feb 2009 11:55:50 -0500, John Almberg <jalmberg at identry.com> wrote:
> Can anyone suggest a way to convert a tab-delimited file to csv using  
> standard unix utilities? I could whip up a Ruby script to do it, but  
> I hate to reinvent the wheel.

I think it's more simple with sed. Use the global substitution
function, such as

	% sed "s/\t/:/g"

See that \t or maybe [ \t]* may be the appropriate field delimiter.
Instead of :, take , or . as separator, just as you need.

Another solution could be awk.

	% awk '{ gsub("[\t]*", ":", $0); print $0; }'

If you need additional re-ordering, use -F or FS to specify
the field separator, and then printf "%s:%s:%s\n", $2, $1, $3;.

These would be the easiest (I think) substitution approaches.



-- 
Polytropon
>From Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...