tab-delimited to csv

[Roland Smith]

On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 11:55:50AM -0500, John Almberg 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  

As long as the files don't contain commas themselves, it is a
straightforward sed or perl command: replace '\t' with '","'
And any field has internal double quotes, it becomes more
difficult. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values

> I hate to reinvent the wheel.

I'd whip up that script. There is a shareware tab2csv utility for
windows for $49.95: http://www.download32.com/info-pack-com-tab2csv-i31827.html

OTOH, if you have a spreadsheet program like Gnumeric or OpenOffice
installed, you might be able to script those to import from tab-delimited
and export to CSV. Admittedly that is like using a nuke to kill a fly.

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith                                   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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