[wplug] awk help

[chris.romano at verizon.net]

> 
> From: duncanhutty at comcast.net
> Date: 2004/08/27 Fri PM 04:48:01 EDT
> To: General user list <wplug at wplug.org>
> Subject: [SPAM] Re: [wplug] awk help
> 
> How about:
> First apply a sed transformation to say that any instance of a comma *inside quotes* were converted to a (pick a suitable escape sequence) and then send it through your awk and then convert all instances of that prior escape sequence back to a commas again.
> 1st sed command:
> /".*"/s/,/\\,/g
> 
> Duncan Hutty
> -------------- Original message -------------- 
> 
> > I am having some issues with parsing a file using awk. I am not sure if awk is 
> > the best tool, but I do not know perl at all. I have a comma delimited file 
> > that has a few fields quoted. In those quoted fields there are commas. So when 
> > awk process those fields it thinks that they are seperate and not one string. 
> > i.e. 
> > 
> > some,text,"is, in",here 
> > 
> > 
> > awk spits out: 
> > some 
> > text 
> > "is 
> > in" 
> > here 
> > 
> > I want it to be 
> > some 
> > text 
> > is, in 
> > here 
> > 
> > my awk command is: 
> > `cat $1 | awk 'BEGIN{FS=","}{print 
> > $1","$3",\""$5"\",\""$6"\","$7","$8","$9","$46","$49}' > output.trans` 


That did not work.  Unless I am reading that wrong.

sed /".*"/s/,/\\,/g filename > output
tried ...
sed /".*"/s/,/\:/g filename > output (changes all "," to ":")
sed /".*"/s/,/\\:/g filename > output (changes all "," to ":")
I will try to mess with sed though.  That is a good idea.

Thanks,
Chris