UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I would like to know how to replace a space delimiter with a ^_ (\037) delimiter and a double quote delimiter while maintaining the spaces inside the double quotes. The double quote delimiter is only used on text fields.
I'd prefer a one-liner, but could handle a function or script that accepts the filename and delimiter as arguments

I have a txt file that looks like this:
"#04274DV1!" 414 "104274DV1" 04/30/09 1.25 "BRK CD 104274DV1" "BROKERED CD 1.25 04/30/2009" "RAVE BANK $2,590,000.00" "" ? 01/30/09 0 "t" "n" 0 "" ? 0 ? ? "mo" 30 "h"

and I want it to look like (:

#04274DV1!^_414^_104274DV1^_04/30/09^_1.25^_BRK CD 104274DV1^_BROKERED CD 1.25 04/30/2009^_RAVE BANK $2,590,000.00^_^_?^_01/30/09^_0^_t^_n^_0^_^_?^_0^_?^_?^_mo^_30^_h

Code:

 
sed 's#^"##g;s# "#\^_#g;s#" #\^_#g'

This works as expected:

Code:

pandeeswaran@ubuntu:~/training$ cat samp
"#04274DV1!" 414 "104274DV1" 04/30/09 1.25 "BRK CD 104274DV1" "BROKERED CD 1.25 04/30/2009" "RAVE BANK $2,590,000.00" "" ? 01/30/09 0 "t" "n" 0 "" ? 0 ? ? "mo" 30 "h" 
pandeeswaran@ubuntu:~/training$ cat samp|sed -e "s/^\"//g" -e "s/\" /\^_/g" -e "s/ \"/\^_/g" -e "s/\^_$//" -e "s/\"//g"
#04274DV1!^_414^_104274DV1^_04/30/09 1.25^_BRK CD 104274DV1^_BROKERED CD 1.25 04/30/2009^_RAVE BANK $2,590,000.00^_^_? 01/30/09 0^_t^_n^_0^_^_? 0 ? ?^_mo^_30^_h

@pandeesh
The short notation ^_ refers to the control code Ctrl/_ which equates to Octal 037 (Hexadecimal 1F). Not a popular choice of field delimiter.

Though this task is relatively easy in a high-level language, the embedded spaces in the original quotes delimited fields makes the task difficult in Shell programming.

Another post where it has to be easier to repair the program which wrote the file.

Code:

perl -pe 's/ /\037/g;s/"//g' input.txt