Re: [GENERAL] import CSV file to a table

On 03/08/2017 09:52 AM, Karl Czajkowski wrote:
> On Mar 08, Rob Sargent modulated:
>
>> Yes Karl, I agree.  I admitted as much.  But if it's clean, as in
>> free of quoted commas, life is much more simple.  I've lost site of
>> whether or not the OP knows his situation w.r.t. to this.  The awk
>> line will tell him and for a one-off load this can make a world of
>> difference in complexity - two bash lines and a COPY.
>>
> Maybe I didn't understand your awk? I thought it was counting commas
> in lines.  This isn't the same as counting commas in records.
>
>      this,is,record,one
>      "this,,","is
>      ,,record","two
>      ,,,"
>
> this has three commas on each line and definitely is not suitable
> for naive CSV handling.
>
>
> Karl
In essence it does count commas but plus one :).  $NF is number of
fields defined by commas so one more field than number of commas. If you
think/hope the file is simple and well formatted, this is a pretty quick
check. But if you're looking for a general solution, you need a real csv
parser.  I recall being quite surprised and amused to learn there is an
actual standard for csv format. (Naturally if you have one to hand, you
don't need the awk line.)