Shell Programming and Scripting

abc,"an,ab",cde,efg
abc,anab,cde,efg

 cut -d',' -f1-1,3-

abc,ab",cde,efg
abc,cde,efg

tr -d '"' < input >newfile

abc,"an,ab",cde,efg
abc,anab,cde,efg

awk -F, '
{
  # translate to array s[1],s[2],...
  j=1
  for (i=1; i<=NF; i++) {
    s[j]=$i
    if ($i~/"[^"]+$/) {
      for (k=i+1; k<=NF && $k!~/"/; k++) {
        s[j]=s[j] FS $k
      }
      s[j]=s[j] FS $k
      i=k
    }
    j++
  }
}
{
  sep=""
  for (i=1; i in s; i++) {
  # condition for printing the array elements
    if (i<=1 || i>=3) {
      printf "%s", sep s[i]
      sep=FS
    }
  }
  print ""
}
' file

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# @(#) s1	Demonstrate csv manipulation, csvtool.

# Utility functions: print-as-echo, print-line-with-visual-space, debug.
# export PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin"
LC_ALL=C ; LANG=C ; export LC_ALL LANG
pe() { for _i;do printf "%s" "$_i";done; printf "\n"; }
pl() { pe;pe "-----" ;pe "$*"; }
db() { ( printf " db, ";for _i;do printf "%s" "$_i";done;printf "\n" ) >&2 ; }
db() { : ; }
C=$HOME/bin/context && [ -f $C ] && $C csvtool

FILE=${1-data1}

pl " Input data file $FILE:"
cat $FILE

pl " Results:"
csvtool col 1,3,4 $FILE

exit 0

$ ./s1

Environment: LC_ALL = C, LANG = C
(Versions displayed with local utility "version")
OS, ker|rel, machine: Linux, 2.6.26-2-amd64, x86_64
Distribution        : Debian 5.0.8 (lenny, workstation) 
bash GNU bash 3.2.39
csvtool - ( /usr/bin/csvtool, 2008-05-22 )

-----
 Input data file data1:
abc,"an,ab",cde,efg
abc,anab,cde,efg

-----
 Results:
abc,cde,efg
abc,cde,efg

Description: A handy command line tool for handling CSV files
 OCaml CSV is a library to read and write CSV (comma-separated values)
 files.  It also supports all extensions used by Excel - eg. quotes,
 newlines, 8 bit characters in fields, etc.
 .
 This package contains csvtool, a handy command line tool for handling
 CSV files from shell scripts.
Homepage: http://merjis.com/developers/csv