CSV Files

		GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide by Graham Williams

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CSV Files

20200421 The command mlr from the package miller is a powerfull command line tool for working with csv, tsv, and tabular JSON files.

A verb is required to specify an action. Here we simply cat the file:

$ mlr cat example.csv
1=color,2=shape,3=flag,4=index,5=quantity,6=rate
1=yellow,2=triangle,3=1,4=11,5=43.6498,6=9.8870
...

Note that the input is a csv file using –icsv:

$ mlr --icsv cat example.csv
color,shape,flag,index,quantity,rate
yellow,triangle,1,11,43.6498,9.8870
red,square,1,15,79.2778,0.0130
...

Pretty print the output using –opprint:

$ mlr --icsv --opprint cat example.csv
color  shape    flag index quantity rate
yellow triangle 1    11    43.6498  9.8870
red    square   1    15    79.2778  0.0130
...

Select fields from the file using the verb cut:

$ mlr --csv --opprint cut -f flag,shape example.csv
shape    flag
triangle 1
square   1
...

Order the fields as specified:

$ mlr --icsv --opprint cut -o -f flag,shape example.csv
flag shape
1    triangle
1    square
...

Select rows using the verb filter with both input and output as csv:

$ mlr --csv filter '$flag == 1' example.csv
color,shape,flag,index,quantity,rate
yellow,triangle,1,11,43.6498,9.8870
red,square,1,15,79.2778,0.0130

Select rows using the verb filter on a character field:

$ mlr --csv filter '$color == "yellow"' example.csv
color,shape,flag,index,quantity,rate
yellow,triangle,1,11,43.6498,9.8870

Further details at https://johnkerl.org/miller/doc/.

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