Processing CSV items one by one using awk

Question

Using the following script to access CSV items.

#!/bin/bash
awk -F "|" 'NR > 0 {print $1}' UserAgents.csv

When running the script I am getting the correct output, i.e. the entire set of values in the first 'column' of the CSV are printed to the terminal. What I would like to add is to read these items one by one and perform some operation on them like concatenate it with a string, and then output them (to file, pipe, or terminal) one by one.

your {print $1} is getting executed per item, one by one. So why not do the action there, try print "hello there " $1 Not putting as an answer, because i feel there might be something else in the problem — abasu
– abasu, Commented Apr 23, 2013 at 15:49
NR > 0 - if that is to ignore blank lines it should be NF > 0 — suspectus
– suspectus, Commented Apr 23, 2013 at 15:58

Ed Morton · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-23 16:24:26Z

2

This should make it clear what your awk script is doing:

awk -F '|' '{
   print NR, NF, $1, "with some trailing text"
}' UserAgents.csv

answered Apr 23, 2013 at 16:24

Ed Morton

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6 Comments

Ethen Hunt Over a year ago

Thanks it helped me understand the way awk processed entries in a CSV file. Although I ended up using IFS for the final version of my script.

Ed Morton Over a year ago

What does I ended up using IFS for the final version of my script mean? There is no IFS bultin variable in awk but there is in shell.

Ethen Hunt Over a year ago

Sorry for the confusion, I meant that I ended up not using awk at all.

Ed Morton Over a year ago

@RaviGupta then you made the wrong choice as this is 100% a job for awk. It's the kind of thing awk was invented for.

Ethen Hunt Over a year ago

I can share my final script if that will help you help me understand the deficiencies in my solution.

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