convert tab delimited file to comma delimited

[hcclnoodles]

Hi there

Just wondered if someone could help me out

I have a file that has been delimited by tabs, ie

field1<tab>fiield2<tab>field3

Does anybody know a command that will convert tabs to commas throughout the entire file?

Note: there are a number of unpopulated fields in the file so after the conversion I would expect to see ,,,,,, in place of the <tab><tab><tab><tab><tab> as it is currently

any help on this would be greatly appreciated

 

[PHV]

Something like this ?
tr '\t' ',' </path/to/input >output

Hope This Helps, PH.
Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884 or FAQ222-2244

 

[hcclnoodles]

Thanks for that PHV it works perfect !! I have one more question if i may (which i forgot to ask above) the file has 30 fields (and as such 30 commas) however, I dont need the last 15 fields for my program, so basically i want some way of removing these. I would like it to remove everything to the right the 15th comma (including that comma itself) I s this possible ?

thanks
Gary

 

[PHV]

man awk

Hope This Helps, PH.
Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884 or FAQ222-2244

 

[PHV]

Another way:
man cut

Hope This Helps, PH.
Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884 or FAQ222-2244

 

[CaKiwi]

Try this (untested) awk script

BEGIN {FS="\t";OFS=","}
{
for (j=1;j<=15;j++) printf $j
print ""
}

CaKiwi

 

[hcclnoodles]

thanks guys ive used the following and it works perfectly

tr '\t' ',' <input_file>output_file

cut -d, -f-12 input_file>output_file


thanks again

 

[hcclnoodles]

me again....thanks for all your help, now i know this is a bit of a dumb question (im a still quite new to this)

I now have the 3 commands i am going to use in my script, they will be

tr '\t' ',' <input_file>output_file
cut -d, -f-12 input_file>output_file
tail +2 input > output

My question is , Do i have to keep producing an output file after each command or is there a way using pipes that i can get all of these commands to be run on my file but with just the one command??

 

[PHV]

Like this ?
tr '\t' ',' <input_file | cut -d, -f-12 | tail +2 >output


Hope This Helps, PH.
Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884 or FAQ222-2244

 

[vgersh99]

something like this?

tr '\t' ',' <input_file | cut -d, -f-12 |tail +2 > output

vlad
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