sed

chedog · 02-03-2010, 02:01 AM

I have been using sed to manulate a csv file but i have one problem that I can't solve.
the csv file has many line and many columns

if in a particular line column 2 has a certain value I want to replace that value with the value in column 5 in the same line.

help please I have searche for hours with this one

EricTRA · 02-03-2010, 02:45 AM

Hello,

I think you should have a look at awk instead of sed. Awk is more equiped to work with columns and separated values. Here's a link to full documentation Sed & Awk. You could also consult the man pages for awk:

Code:

man awk

Kind regards,

Eric

H_TeXMeX_H · 02-03-2010, 04:10 AM

Yes, do try using awk:
http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Awk.html

bmxcess · 02-03-2010, 04:30 AM

Using sed for csv is perfectly valid. The sedfaq should be on your system with sed. Search for csv. In my distro under /usr/share/doc/sed-4.2.1/sedfaq.txt.gz

HTH

pixellany · 02-03-2010, 06:34 AM

No "sedfaq" on my system---never seen such a thing. But a really good tutorial is here: http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Sed.html

BUT--with data in columns--awk is probably easier.

bmxcess · 02-03-2010, 08:49 AM

For most applications I'd agree. FWIW the Sed FAQ can also be found here: http://sed.sourceforge.net/sedfaq.html