CSVKit: CSV utilities that includes csvsql, csvgrep, csvstat, and more

Re:CSVKit: CSV utilities that includes csvsql, csvgrep, csvs... by icebraining on Tuesday May 27, 2014 @05:10PM (#7806893)

Grep understands text files, not CSV syntax. They're not equivalent. For example, the following CSV document has two lines, but grep treats them as three:

  1,2,5,"Hello"
  3,4,5,"How are
  you doing?"

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Re:CSVKit: CSV utilities that includes csvsql, csvgrep, csvs... by dbro on Wednesday May 28, 2014 @03:19AM (#7808804)

That's correct, and as you illustrate it's the possibility to have newlines and commas inside quoted fields that complicates things for grep/awk/cut/etc.

So instead of making a more complex version of tools like grep, we can make the data simple for these tools to understand. That's what https://github.com/dbro/csvquote does. It can be run in a pipeline before the grep stage, and allow grep/cut/awk/... to work with unambiguous field and record delimiters. Then it can restore the newlines and commas inside the quoted fields at the end of the pipeline.

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