How to read values in a particular column of a CSV file in Batch?

Question

I am planning to write a batch script wherein I need to scan the values from a particular column of a CSV file one by one and store them in a variable for further processing.

Say, following is the CSV file:

A1 B1 C1 D1 E1
A2 B2 C2 D2 E2
A3 B3 C3 D3 E3
.. .. .. .. ..

I have to read D1, execute a command using it's value, read D2, execute a command, and so on.

How can this be achieved?

Solution 1

Suppose you have a space-delimited file named yourfile.csv, and you want to read the fourth (D1) column, you should execute this:

for /F "tokens=4 delims= " %i in (yourfile.csv) do @echo %i

Solution 2

On windows 7 with powershell you can easly parse the csv with Import-Csv EX:

Import-Csv -Delimiter " " -Header a,b,c,d,e c:\the.csv | foreach{ Write-Host $_.d }

Comments

[DanteTheEgregore]

Welcome to Super User! Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference.

[and31415]

FYI, the command won't work properly if the file name contains spaces. You need to put straight quotes around the file name and enable the usebackq option, like this: for /f "usebackq tokens=4 delims= " %i in ("your file.csv") do @echo %i Also, the delimiter already incluses spaces and tabs by default, so it might be omitted in this case.