Re: Converting comma-delimited data to tab-delimited

Tried the following to replace multiple occurences of commas within quotes,
but the 2nd while loop never fires:

while (<>) {
while (m/\"(.*)(,)(.*)\"/) {
s/\"(.*)(,)(.*)\"/$1\x00$3/;
}
s/,/\t/g;
s/\x00/,/g;
print $_;
}

Can anyone help?

> Just discovered the following code only works if there's only ONE comma
> between quotes. Back to the drawing board :(
>
>> I answered my question by writing the following perl script:
>>
>>
>> #!/usr/local/bin/perl
>> # comma_to_tab.pl
>> #
>> # usage: ./comma_to_tab.pl data.csv > data.tab
>> #
>> # Description:
>> # 1. finds any occurences of a comma between double quotes and replaces
>> it with low ASCII char x00
>> # 2. replaces all remaining commas with tabs
>> # 3. changes all x00 chars back to commas
>>
>> while (<>) {
>> s/\"(.*)(,)(.*)\"/$1\x00$3/g;
>> s/,/\t/g;
>> s/\x00/,/g;
>> print $_;
>> }
>>
>>
>>> perl -ne 's/^ *"//; s/" *$//; print join("\t", split(/\" *, *\"/))'
>>> your-table.csv > your-table.tab

--
Randy Perry
sysTame
Mac Consulting/Sales

phn 561.589.6449
mobile email help(at)systame(dot)com