How to split a list by comma in bash script

Question

I was trying to read a csv file and split the data by comma.

I used

IFS=, list=($line)
for word in ${list[@]}; do
  echo $word
done

to split the csv record based on comma, which works fine.

The issue is when I have a quoted string in the csv which contains a comma

Name, "Oct 2, 2015 at 1:06 PM", Superman

In this scenario it returns

Name
"Oct 2
 2015 at 1:06 PM"
Superman

Whereas I want

Name
"Oct 2, 2015 at 1:06 PM"
Superman

How to solve this?

Instead, use a proper parser in Python, Perl... – fedorqui May 19 '16 at 12:39 — fedorqui, May 19 '16 at 12:39
`apt-get install csvtool` ? – Casimir et Hippolyte May 19 '16 at 12:41 — Casimir et Hippolyte, May 19 '16 at 12:41

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered May 19 '16 at 12:41

There isn't a good way to do this in pure bash, and you can't use cut to do it, which also doesn't respect quotes.

There are good command-line utilities around that do it, though. Fedora has a csv package, for instance, that provides a csv command that does the same sort of thing as cut but respecting quotes:

[james@marlon ~] $ echo '1,"3,w",4' | csv --col 2
"3,w"

It also provides a package ocaml-csv, which gives you csvtool with similar functionality:

[james@marlon ~] $ echo '1,"3,w",4' | csvtool col 2 -
"3,w"

These are very likely to be available on other distros too.

How to split a list by comma in bash script

1 Answers1

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