csvcsv.md

csvcsv

A command line utility to convert a csv file from one variant to another.

Motivation

Although there exists a formal csv standard, in practice there are many variations of csv formats. This utility converts csv files between some of the common variants so utilities written for one variant can be used with csv file in another variant format.

Basic Usage

Given the following csv file,

ID,NAME,EMAIL,TEL
1001,"Doe, John","jdoe@email.com","111-111-1111"
1002,"Smith, Jane","jsmith@email.com","222-222-2222"

csvcsv can strip quotes from all values using the strip option, -s:

$ csvcsv -s users.csv
ID,NAME,EMAIL,TEL
1001,Doe, John,jdoe@email.com,111-111-1111
1002,Smith, Jane,jsmith@email.com,222-222-2222

But stripping quotes from all values can cause a loss of information if the value contains a special character such as the comma or newline, as can be seen above in the NAME column. To strip quotes from all values except where it can cause loss of information, use the minimally quote option, -m:

$ csvcsv -m users.csv
ID,NAME,EMAIL,TEL
1001,"Doe, John",jdoe@email.com,111-111-1111
1002,"Smith, Jane",jsmith@email.com,222-222-2222

csvcsv can also add quotes to all values using the quote option -q, or quote only non-numeric values using the autoquote option -a:

$ csvcsv -q users.csv
"ID","NAME","EMAIL","TEL"
"1001","Doe, John","jdoe@email.com","111-111-1111"
"1002","Smith, Jane","jsmith@email.com","222-222-2222"

$ csvcsv -a users.csv
"ID","NAME","EMAIL","TEL"
1001,"Doe, John","jdoe@email.com","111-111-1111"
1002,"Smith, Jane","jsmith@email.com","222-222-2222"

See the man page for more options and information.