How can I parse CSV files on the Linux command line? [closed]

Answer 1

My FOSS CSV stream editor CSVfix does exactly what you want. There is a binary installer for Windows, and a compilable version (via a makefile) for UNIX/Linux.

Answer 2

This sounds like a job for awk.

You will most likely need to write your own script for your specific needs, but this site has some dialogue about how to go about doing this.

You could also use the cut utility to strip the fields out.

Something like:

cut -f 2,5,6 -d , filename

where the -f argument is the field you want and -d is the delimeter you want. You could then sort these results, find the unique ones, or use any other bash utility. There is a cool video here about working with CSV files from the command line. Only about a minute, I'd take a look.

However, I guess you could group the cut utility with awk and not want to use it. I don't really know what exactly you mean by native bash command though, so I'll still suggest it.

Answer 3

For a super lightweight wrapper around Python's csv module, you could look at pluckr.

Answer 4

I wrote one of these tools too (UNIX only) called csvprintf. It can also converts to XML in an online fashion.

Answer 5

ffe is another great tool. It requires you to create a configuration file for most non-trivial tasks. The upside is that it's very flexible and can handle all sorts of structure, logic, and formatting that other tools can't.

I like to use csvtool for quick jobs and use ffe for complex jobs or jobs that require frequent repeating.

Answer 6

A quick google reveals an awk script that seems to handle csv files.