UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

I have pipe delimited file in which some of the description fields can have commas. e.g.

1|123|abc,def
2|456|qwert
3|345|aty,try,rty

I need to convert this to a 'csv' file BUT i need to add \ before every comma present in the description values (so that my next program can read it as a csv of three fields and the comma in the description field gets escaped by \)

Please help

Thanks

Hi.

Based on the subject "Escaping comma with \ in file"...

Code:

$ cat input_file
1|123|abc,def
2|456|qwert
3|345|aty,try,rty

$ sed "s/,/\\\,/g;s/|/,/g" input_file
1,123,abc\,def
2,456,qwert
3,345,aty\,try\,rty

Thanks Scott it work perfectly fine

sed "s/,/\\\,/g;s/|/,/g" testcommafile.txt > newfile

Code:

sed 's:,:\\,:g;y:|:,:' file