Using CSV line as command parameters

shell text-processing pipe csv

7,984

Solution 1

That's pretty easy:

sed '1d;s/\([^,]*\),\([^,]*\),\([^,]*\)/.\/mycommand --name="\1" --age="\2" --address="\3"/e' file.csv

1d will delete caption line. s command will modify the string like in your example e in the end of s command will execute the string. this is GNU extension, so if you don't have GNU sed, you can use xargs instead e:

sed '1d;s/\([^,]*\),\([^,]*\),\([^,]*\)/.\/mycommand --name="\1" --age="\2" --address="\3"/' file.csv | xargs

Solution 2

If your CSV is simple CSV with no quoting mechanism (hence commas cannot appear in a field), you can do the parsing in the shell.

{
  read line  # ignore the header line
  IFS=,
  while read -r name age address; do
    ./mycommand --name="$name" --age="$age" --address="$address"
  done
} <input.csv

If fields can be quoted, you need a real CSV parser. Use Perl, Python, R, Ruby or other languages.

Solution 3

Besides sed, there is awk...

awk -F, 'NR > 1 { system("./mycommand --name=\\\"" $1 "\\\" --age=" $2 " --address=\\\"" $3 "\\\"") }' < file.csv

7,984

MZAweb

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

MZAweb over 1 year
I have a CSV file like:
```
Name,Age,Address
Daniel Dvorkin,28,Some Address St. 1234
(... N ...)
Foo Bar,90,Other Address Av. 3210
```
And I have a command that take this parameters:
```
./mycommand --name="Daniel Dvorkin" --age=28 --address="Some Address St. 1234"
```
What is the easiest way to run mycommand for each line of the CSV?
- Bernhard almost 12 years
  
  Do you want name, age and address also from the CSV file?
MZAweb almost 12 years

Is it possible that you're missing a close quote?
rush almost 12 years

Oh, sorry. I did. But right now it is fixed. Thank you.
MZAweb almost 12 years

How are you passing the file contents to this?
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' almost 12 years

@MZAweb Oh, yeah. Redirect the input of that shell snippet from the file or pipe containing your data. See my edit.
MZAweb almost 12 years

Love the simplicity of this one. Thanks!! Will test ASAP.
Simon Gates almost 12 years

+1 for the ‘simple CSV’ proviso. CSV is much harder to parse from the shell than its acronym would have you believe.
JaakL almost 7 years

I like this one much more than the sed magic in accepted answer, as it is actually readable (i.e. usable).
Vasily802 over 6 years

could you please explain what \\\ mean