How to redirect the output to a different column in .csv file

Sayan Acharjee · 04-25-2011, 11:08 AM

Hi,

I was trying to redirect the output of two variables to different columns of a .csv file in MS excel like this,

Code:

echo "$a \t $b" > abc.csv

But I am getting both $a and $b in the same column, is there anything I can use instead of \t to move the value of $b to the next column? Or is there a good different approach to do it?

Thanks

edprochak · 04-25-2011, 11:37 AM

This is a RTFM question.
The man page for echo describes this option:
-e enable interpretation of backslash escapes

so you need echo -e ...

Ed

michaelk · 04-25-2011, 11:43 AM

FYI I assume this file will be imported into Excel. I believe that by default Excel assumes that CSV files use a comma and text files use a tab. However, you can specify any character as a column separator when importing.