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awkoutputfieldseparator

How to print quotes between value using awk

I have a file

A|B|C|D|E|F

I need output like

"A","B","C","D","E","F"

I did:

awk -f'|' '{print $1,$2,$3}'

This gives me output just with spaces. My question is how to get comma separated output with quotes, and how to print all values at once without typing '{print $1,$2,$3......}'

I can do:

awk -f'|' '{print """"$1""""","""""$2""""","""""$3""""..}'

But it does not work.

Solution

  • To specify the field separator, you have to use -F instead of -f; to change what the field separator is for the output, you have to change the OFS variable (the output field separator).

    The get quotes around your fields, you can loop over all fields and add them:

    $ awk -F"|" -v OFS="," '{for (i=1; i<=NF; ++i){$i="\""$i"\""}}1' infile
"A","B","C","D","E","F"

    Alternatively, using sed:

    $ sed 's/\([^|]*\)/"\1"/g;y/|/,/' infile
"A","B","C","D","E","F"

    This surrounds all sequences of non-pipe characters with quotes, then substitutes all the pipes with commas.