Re:Excel and SQL
by Glyptodon on Thursday May 23, 2013 @08:02PM
(#5760375)
I've had pretty straightforward success with Python's built in CSV parsing. Not sure what you mean by "Linux tools aren't great for working with CSVs" exactly. I guess maybe Python's not a "Linux tool," but it's sure easy to use for quick stuff from the shell.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
I imagine he means things like awk, sed, sort, etc., that are standard unix tools. The newer versions of gawk have extensions that are designed to help handle CSV files, but, unfortunately, Arnold Robbins opted to make it "some assembly required." Given the fiddlyness of parsing CSV files and their ubiquity, hard-coding a CSV mode probably would have been a better solution.