shellscript: read csv and print as string doesn't work as expected

Question

I'm reading a single-cell csv file and printing the value as a string with some other strings attached to it. It does not work for certain combinations. Do you know why?

 while IFS="," read ts
 do
     echo "timestamp is: $
     tstamp=$ts
 done < timestamp.csv

 a="TS_"
 c="234"
 b=".log"
 d="${a}${c}${b}"
 Log_1="${a}$tstamp"
 Log_2="${tstamp}${a}"
 echo "$d"
 echo "$Log_1"
 echo "$Log_2"

actual result:

timestamp is: 0x5cff71d8

TS_234.log

TS_0x5cff71d8

TS_cff71d8

expected result:

timestamp is: 0x5cff71d8

TS_234.log

TS_0x5cff71d8

0x5cff71d8TS_

AlexP · Accepted Answer · 2019-10-08 20:46:31Z

1

The CSV file was made on a Windows machine and each line ends with a CR ('\r', '\x0D') character followed by a LF ('\n', '\x0A') character; you are reading the file on a Linux or Unix or MacOS machine, where lines are supposed to end with a bare LF character.

CR is Carriage Return: printing this character moves the cursor back to the beginning of the line.

Your $Log_2 variable contains 0 x 5 c f f 7 1 d 8 \r T S _, which, when printed looks like TS_cff71d8:

0x5cff71d8\r (now cursor moves back to the beginning of the line)
TS_ (overwriting the first three characters)

To check, try echo "$Log_2" | od -A x -t x1z -v (or whatever options for od work on your system).

To get rid of the MS-DOS-ish CR characters, you may have a utility on your system named dos2unix; or you may try sed -e 's/\r//g'.

answered Oct 8, 2019 at 20:46

AlexP

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1 Comment

Amin Over a year ago

Thank you so much. I tested the "sed" and it works.

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