Replacing a line in a csv file? - linux

I have a set of 10 CSV files, which normally have a an entry of this kind
a,b,c,d
d,e,f,g
Now due to some error entries in this file have become of this kind
a,b,c,d
d,e,f,g
,,,
h,i,j,k
Now I want to remove the line with only commas in all the files. These files are on a Linux filesystem.
Any command that you recommend that can replaces the erroneous lines in all the files.

It depends on what you mean by replace. If you mean 'remove', then a trivial variant on #wnoise's solution is:
grep -v '^,,,$' old-file.csv > new-file.csv
Note that this deletes just those lines with exactly three commas. If you want to delete mal-formed lines with any number of commas (including zero) - and no other characters on the line, then:
grep -v '^,*$' ...
There are endless other variations on the regex that would deal with other scenarios. Dealing with full CSV data with commas inside quotes starts to need something other than a regex machine. It can be done, within broad limits, especially in more complex regex systems such as PCRE or Perl. But it requires more work.
Check out Mastering Regular Expressions.

sed 's/,,,/replacement/' < old-file.csv > new-file.csv
optionally followed by
mv new-file.csv old-file.csv

Replace or remove, your post is not clear... For replacement see wnoise's answer. For removing, you could use
awk '$0 !~ /,,,/ {print}' <old-file.csv > new-file.csv

What about trying to keep only lines which are matching the desired format instead of handling one exception ?
If the provided input is what you really want to match:
grep -E '[a-z],[a-z],[a-z],[a-z]' < oldfile.csv > newfile.csv
If the input is different, provide it, the regular expression should not be too hard to write.

Do you want to replace them with something, or delete them entirely? Either way, it can be done with sed. To delete:
sed -i -e '/^,\+$/ D' yourfile1.csv yourfile2.csv ...
To replace: well, see wnoise's answer, or if you don't want to create new files with the output,
sed -i -e '/^,\+$/ s//replacement/' yourfile1.csv yourfile2.csv ...
or
sed -i -e '/^,\+$/ c\
replacement' yourfile1.csv yourfile2.csv ...
(that should be entered exactly as is, including the line break). Of course, you can also do this with awk or perl or, if you're only deleting lines, even grep:
egrep -v '^,+$' < oldfile.csv > newfile.csv
I tested these to make sure they work, but I'd advise you to do the same before using them (just in case). You can omit the -i option from sed, in which case it'll print out the results (rather than writing them back to the file), or omit the output redirection >newfile.csv from grep.
EDIT: It was pointed out in a comment that some features of these sed commands only work on GNU sed. As far as I can tell, these are the -i option (which can be replaced with shell redirection, sed ... <infile >outfile ) and the \+ modifier (which can be replaced with \{1,\} ).

Most simply:
$ grep -v ,,,, oldfile > newfile
$ mv newfile oldfile

yes, awk or grep are very good option if you are working in linux platform. However you can use perl regex for other platform. using join & split options.

Related

How to input a command's result as a string argument in sed

i want to execute a command as follows on my bash terminal:
sed -i '6i `sed '1!d' input.in`' out
with which i can insert at line 6 of file out (with replacing -i option) the result of the sed '%1!d' input.in command. I haven't found anything useful, and have tried both `com`, $(com) and com | sed -i '6i ' out, where com stands for sed '%1!d' input.in. I don't have any problem changing the syntax of the whole command but i want it to be written in one line on terminal use sed.
Thanks for listening,
awaiting your answer.
For EdMorton:
Example Input:
input.in:
into a lake.
out:
Mary was runing around a pond and fell
into a lake.
Mary fell into a what?
Desired Output:
Mary was runing around a pond and fell
into a lake.
Mary fell into a what?
into a lake.
Try using r on standard input instead of i.
sed '%1!d' input.in |
sed -i '6r /dev/stdin' out
If your platform doesn't support /dev/stdin or /dev/fd/0, see if your sed supports - to mean standard input ... or, in the worst case, resort to a temporary file.
As commenters have already pointed out, %1!d does not appear to be a valid command in most sed dialects, but that is basically unimportant here. (If you mean to print just the first line, maybe you mean sed '1!d', although sed 'p;q' does that more efficiently.)
sed is for simple substitutions on individual lines, that is all. For anything else you should be using awk.
Given this modified input file
$ cat input.in
a Windows folder C:\Windows\Temp
Here is what the sed solution you posted in your comments does:
$ sed '1!d' input.in > temp.of.in && sed "6i `cat temp.of.in`" out
Mary was runing around a pond and fell
into a lake.
Mary fell into a what?
a Windows folder C:WindowsTemp
and here is what an awk solution does more efficiently and accurately and without a temp file:
$ awk 'NR==1{x=$0;nextfile} FNR==6{print x} 1' input.in out
Mary was runing around a pond and fell
into a lake.
Mary fell into a what?
a Windows folder C:\Windows\Temp
Notice the awk solution preserved the path-separator backslashes while the sed one stripped them. Also note that you should really add && rm temp.of.in to the end of your sed command line to clean up the temp file and you should be using $(..) to execute your command, not obsolete backticks.
The awk solution uses GNU awk for ;nextfile, with other awks you'd replace that with }NR==FNR{next or similar but since you are using GNU sed I assume you have GNU awk too.
Note that if you DID have a burning desire to use sed and accept it won't exactly reproduce the input, there are simpler, more efficient ways to do what your current script does, e.g.:
sed "6i $(head -1 input.in)" out
or even your original idea, just rewritten to remove the obsolete backticks and negative logic of 1!d:
sed "6i $(sed -n '1p' input.in)" out
But seriously - just use awk. For anything other than simple substitutions on individual lines it's much more robust, efficient, clear, portable, extensible, etc. etc. than sed.
EDIT To address the questions in your comments:
Can you explain the arguments on awk.
There are no arguments, just a script that says: If this is the first line read from the first file save it in variable x then move on to the next file. If this is line 6 of the 2nd file print the contents of variable x. For every line of the 2nd file, print it (the 1 is idiomatic but a bit tricky at first glance - it's a true condition so it invokes the default action of printing the current input, equivalent to just writing {print}.
how can i replace the out file with the output (without using '>') as the option -i does on sed and avoid printing it to stdout? Just like GNU sed has -i, GNU awk has -i inplace. Be careful though because, just like with sed, it applies to every input file so if you don't print the contents of the first file then when the script is done the first file will be empty. There's various was to deal with that, including simply printing the lines from file 1 or turning inplace editing on/off in BEGINFILE/ENDFILE blocks, see https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.html#Extension-Sample-Inplace, but IMHO awk 'script' file1 file2 > temp && mv temp file2 is the simplest and clearest as well as being portable to all awks/seds/whatever.
Also if there is a multiline solution like "take lines 1 to 4" from "input.in" and drop them on line 6 of "out"? No problem:
.
awk '
NR==FNR { if (NR<=4) x=x $0 ORS; else nextfile }
FNR==6 { printf "%s", x }
{ print }
' input.in out
I changed the 1 from the previous script to { print } for clarity.

remove \n and keep space in linux

I have a file contained \n hidden behind each line:
input:
s3741206\n
s2561284\n
s4411364\n
s2516482\n
s2071534\n
s2074633\n
s7856856\n
s11957134\n
s682333\n
s9378200\n
s1862626\n
I want to remove \n behind
desired output:
s3741206
s2561284
s4411364
s2516482
s2071534
s2074633
s7856856
s11957134
s682333
s9378200
s1862626
however, I try this:
tr -d '\n' < file1 > file2
but it goes like below without space and new line
s3741206s2561284s4411364s2516482s2071534s2074633s7856856s11957134s682333s9378200s1862626
I also try sed $'s/\n//g' -i file1 and it doesn't work in mac os.
Thank you.
This is a possible solution using sed:
sed 's/\\n/ /g'
with awk
awk '{sub(/\\n/,"")} 1' < file1 > file2
What you are describing so far in your question+comments doesn't make sense. How can you have a multi-line file with a hidden newline character at the end of each line? What you show as your input file:
s3741206\n
s2561284\n
s4411364\n
etc.
where each "\n" above according to your comment is a single newline character "\n" is impossible. If those "\n"s were newline characters then your file would simply look like:
s3741206
s2561284
s4411364
etc.
There's really only 2 possibilities I can think of:
You are wrongly interpreting what you are seeing in your input file
and/or using the wrong terminology and you actually DO have \r\n
at the end of every line. Run cat -v file to see the \rs as
^Ms and run dos2unix or similar (e.g. sed 's/\r$//' file) to
remove the \rs - you do not want to remove the \ns or you will
no longer have a POSIX text file and so POSIX tools will exhibit
undefined behavior when run on it. If that doesn't work for you then
copy/paste the output of cat -v file into your question so we can
see for sure what is in your file.
Or:
It's also entirely possible that your file is a perfectly fine POSIX
text file as-is and you are incorrectly assuming you will have a
problem for some reason so also include in your question a
description of the actual problem you are having, include an example
of the command you are executing on that input file and the output
you are getting and the output you expected to get.
You could use bash-native string substitution
$ cat /tmp/newline
s3741206\n
s2561284\n
s4411364\n
s2516482\n
s2071534\n
s2074633\n
s7856856\n
s11957134\n
s682333\n
s9378200\n
s1862626\n
$ for LINE in $(cat /tmp/newline); do echo "${LINE%\\n}"; done
s3741206
s2561284
s4411364
s2516482
s2071534
s2074633
s7856856
s11957134
s682333
s9378200
s1862626

Quickest way to remove 70+ strings from a file?

I have 70+ strings I need to find and delete in a file. I need to remove the entire line in the file that the string appears in.
I know I can use sed -i '/string to remove/d' fileA.txt to remove them one at a time. However, considering I have 70+, it will take some time doing it this way.
Is there a way I can put these 70+ strings in a file and have sed go through them one by one? Or if I create a file containing the strings, is there a way to compare the two files so it removes any line from fileA that contains one of the strings?
You could use grep:
grep -vf file_with_words.txt file.txt
where file_with_words.txt would be the file containing the list of words, each word being on a different line and file.txt is the file that you want to remove the lines from.
If your list of words contains regex metacharacters, then tell grep to consider those as fixed strings (if that is what you want):
grep -F -vf file_with_words.txt file.txt
Using sed, you'd need to say:
sed '/word1\|word2\|word3/d' file.txt
or
sed -E '/word1|word2|word3/d' file.txt
You could use command substitution to construct the pattern too:
sed -E "/$(paste -sd'|' file_with_words.txt)/d" file.txt
but grep is clearly the tool to use in this case.
If you want to do the job in bash, here's how:
search=fileA.txt
queries=queries.txt
while read query
do
sed -i '' "/$query/d" $search
done < "$queries"
where queries.txt looks like
I
want
to
delete
these
lines

Removing Parts of String With Sed

I have lines of data that looks like this:
sp_A0A342_ATPB_COFAR_6_+_contigs_full.fasta
sp_A0A342_ATPB_COFAR_9_-_contigs_full.fasta
sp_A0A373_RK16_COFAR_10_-_contigs_full.fasta
sp_A0A373_RK16_COFAR_8_+_contigs_full.fasta
sp_A0A4W3_SPEA_GEOSL_15_-_contigs_full.fasta
How can I use sed to delete parts of string after 4th column (_ separated) for each line.
Finally yielding:
sp_A0A342_ATPB_COFAR
sp_A0A342_ATPB_COFAR
sp_A0A373_RK16_COFAR
sp_A0A373_RK16_COFAR
sp_A0A4W3_SPEA_GEOSL
cut is a better fit.
cut -d_ -f 1-4 old_file
This simply means use _ as delimiter, and keep fields 1-4.
If you insist on sed:
sed 's/\(_[^_]*\)\{4\}$//'
This left hand side matches exactly four repetitions of a group, consisting of an underscore followed by 0 or more non-underscores. After that, we must be at the end of the line. This is all replaced by nothing.
sed -e 's/\([^_]*\)_\([^_]*\)_\([^_]*\)_\([^_]*\)_.*/\1_\2_\3_\4' infile > outfile
Match "any number of not '_'", saving what was matched between \( and \), followed by '_'. Do this 4 times, then match anything for the rest of the line (to be ignored). Substitute with each of the matches separated by '_'.
Here's another possibility:
sed -E -e 's|^([^_]+(_[^_]+){3}).*$|\1|'
where -E, like -r in GNU sed, turns on extended regular expressions for readability.
Just because you can do it in sed, though, doesn't mean you should. I like cut much much better for this.
AWK likes to play in the fields:
awk 'BEGIN{FS=OFS="_"}{print $1,$2,$3,$4}' inputfile
or, more generally:
awk -v count=4 'BEGIN{FS="_"}{for(i=1;i<=count;i++){printf "%s%s",sep,$i;sep=FS};printf "\n"}'
sed -e 's/_[0-9][0-9]*_[+-]_contigs_full.fasta$//g'
Still the cut answer is probably faster and just generally better.
Yes, cut is way better, and yes matching the back of each is easier.
I finally got a match using the beginning of each line:
sed -r 's/(([^_]*_){3}([^_]*)).*/\1/' oldFile > newFile

Linux command to replace string in LARGE file with another string

I have a huge SQL file that gets executed on the server. The dump is from my machine and in it there are a few settings relating to my machine. So basically, I want every occurance of "c://temp" to be replace by "//home//some//blah"
How can this be done from the command line?
sed is a good choice for large files.
sed -i.bak -e 's%C://temp%//home//some//blah%' large_file.sql
It is a good choice because doesn't read the whole file at once to change it. Quoting the manual:
A stream editor is used to perform
basic text transformations on an input
stream (a file or input from a
pipeline). While in some ways similar
to an editor which permits scripted
edits (such as ed), sed works by
making only one pass over the
input(s), and is consequently more
efficient. But it is sed's ability to
filter text in a pipeline which
particularly distinguishes it from
other types of editors.
The relevant manual section is here. A small explanation follows
-i.bak enables in place editing leaving a backup copy with .bak extension
s%foo%bar% uses s, the substitution command, which
substitutes matches of first string
in between the % sign, 'foo', for the second
string, 'bar'. It's usually written as s//
but because your strings have plenty
of slashes, it's more convenient to
change them for something else so you
avoid having to escape them.
Example
vinko#mithril:~$ sed -i.bak -e 's%C://temp%//home//some//blah%' a.txt
vinko#mithril:~$ more a.txt
//home//some//blah
D://temp
//home//some//blah
D://temp
vinko#mithril:~$ more a.txt.bak
C://temp
D://temp
C://temp
D://temp
Just for completeness. In place replacement using perl.
perl -i -p -e 's{c://temp}{//home//some//blah}g' mysql.dmp
No backslash escapes required either. ;)
Try sed? Something like:
sed 's/c:\/\/temp/\/\/home\/\/some\/\/blah/' mydump.sql > fixeddump.sql
Escaping all those slashes makes this look horrible though, here's a simpler example which changes foo to bar.
sed 's/foo/bar/' mydump.sql > fixeddump.sql
As others have noted, you can choose your own delimiter, which would prevent the leaning toothpick syndrome in this case:
sed 's|c://temp\\|home//some//blah|' mydump.sql > fixeddump.sql
The clever thing about sed is that it operating on a stream rather than a file all at once, so you can process huge files using only a modest amount of memory.
There's also a non-standard UNIX utility, rpl, which does the exact same thing that the sed examples do; however, I'm not sure whether rpl operates streamwise, so sed may be the better option here.
The sed command can do that.
Rather than escaping the slashes, you can choose a different delimiter (_ in this case):
sed -e 's_c://temp/_/home//some//blah/_' file1.txt > file2.txt
perl -pi -e 's#c://temp#//home//some//blah#g' yourfilename
The -p will treat this script as a loop, it will read the specified file line by line running the regex search and replace.
-i This flag should be used in conjunction with the -p flag. This commands Perl to edit the file in place.
-e Just means execute this perl code.
Good luck
gawk
awk '{gsub("c://temp","//home//some//blah")}1' file

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