Extract specific columns from delimited file using Awk

Question

Sorry if this is too basic. I have a csv file where the columns have a header row (v1, v2, etc.). I understand that to extract columns 1 and 2, I have to do: awk -F \

Answer 1

Not using awk but the simplest way I was able to get this done was to just use csvtool. I had other use cases as well to use csvtool and it can handle the quotes or delimiters appropriately if they appear within the column data itself.

csvtool format '%(2)\n' input.csv
csvtool format '%(2),%(3),%(4)\n' input.csv

Replacing 2 with the column number will effectively extract the column data you are looking for.