UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

I am working right now with a csv file and I want to insert an excel formula say to the 6th column.

sample csv file:

Code:

1234,lag,0,77,544,,7
1234,lag,222,0,7,,7

at first i used a simple command:

Code:

sed 's/^\(.\{17\}\)/\1word/' file.csv

but the result is this:

Code:

1234,lag,0,77,544word,,7
1234,lag,222,0,7,word,7

result should be:

Code:

1234,lag,0,77,544,word,7
1234,lag,222,0,7,word,7

i'm a newbie in unix.

I tried using the sed command i found in one the the threads here but i can only make it work to insert up to 2 columns. I don't really understand how to this works. hope somebody could help. thanks!

this is not mine, I just found this command from one of the threads here:

Code:

sed 's/^\([^,]*\),[^,]*,/\1,word,/' file.csv

result:

Code:

1234,word,lag,0,77,544,,7
1234,word,lag,222,0,7,,7

and i cant seem to make it work so that it will insert a word in the 7th column.


Thanks!

Code:

awk -F, -v OFS=, '{ $6 = "word" } 1' file1
1234,lag,0,77,544,word,7
1234,lag,222,0,7,word,7

Or if it's always field 6 and none of the earlier fields are empty:

Code:

sed "s/,,/,word,/" file1
1234,lag,0,77,544,word,7
1234,lag,222,0,7,word,7

thank you very much scottn! it worked!! haha :-)