How to convert text to csv or xls?

[Geoff Wild]

I have a tab delimited file (in Unix of course) - is there a "free" way to convert it to csv or xls format?

This has to be done at the Unix level - not from Windows...needs to be part of a script...

Thanks...Geoff

[Sandman!]

Hi Geoff...without a sample input file here's my construct:

# tr "\t" "," outfile

cheers!

[Kent Ostby]

awk '{FS="\t"; for (idx=1;idx output.csv

[Geoff Wild]

Here's part of the file...

Basically, I want to open in Excel (or management does) and not have to do a "data" -> "Text to columns" every time....

Rgds...Geoff

[A. Clay Stephenson]

This is actually far from trivial. String fields must be enclosed in quotes. Because the string field might contain comma's the comma's need to be quoted as well. You must compose a valid header line.

I would look hard at the Text::CSV Perl module.

[someone_4]

Hi

I took your data file and imported in excel.
Was this what you where trying to do?

open excel

file
open - pick your file
Deleminited is checked
Next
Tab
Finish.

Richard

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Geoff:

Try this:

# perl -pe 's/(.+?)\t+/"$1",/g;s/,([^"]+?)$/,"$1"/' filename

Regards!

...JRF...

[Patrice Le Guyader]

Hi,

I agree with Clay, I would look hard to Text::CSV Perl module and/or after I would use Spreadsheet::WriteExcel to create this file.

http://search.cpan.org/~alancitt/Text-CSV-0.01/CSV.pm
http://search.cpan.org/~jmcnamara/Spreadsheet-WriteExcel-2.16/lib/Spreadsheet/WriteExcel.pm

Hope this helps
Kenavo
Pat

[Geoff Wild]

Richard - yes - that's what I want it to look like - but without having to do in Excel...

Sandmans tr works fine.

Clay - yes - I've heard of that module - through google - I may have to look at it further..

James - yours works as well....

Kent - yours dropped the last column for some reason?

Rgds...Geoff

[Geoff Wild]

Wow - those perl modules are intense!

That is going to take me a wee bit to disect....

Is there a Perl Doctor in the house? :)

Here's my script so far:

#!/bin/sh
#
# EC-Inventory-Data-Collection script
# uses data gathered by /opt/AssetCentre/asset_reporting.ksh
# which is stored in /var/opt/AssetCentre/reports
#
#

RPTDIR=/var/opt/AssetCentre/reports
TMPFIL=/tmp/EC-Inventory-Data.txt
CSV=/htdocs/mambo/dmdocuments/Infrastructure/Server-Planning/EC-Inventory-Data-Collection.csv

if [ -f $CSV ] ;
then
cp -p $CSV $CSV.old
fi

cat $RPTDIR/label > $TMPFIL

for SERVER in `ls $RPTDIR/*.value`
do
cat $SERVER >> $TMPFIL
done

tr "\t" "," <$TMPFIL >$CSV



The SERVER.value (tab delimited) files are created from another script - all I want to do is gather all that individual info and put it in a spreadsheet...

Thanks...Geoff