https://github.com/dnmfarrell/bash-csv

Bash library to parse csv strings into an array
https://github.com/dnmfarrell/bash-csv

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Bash library to parse csv strings into an array

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/dnmfarrell/bash-csv
• Owner: dnmfarrell
• Created: 2021-12-10T15:46:31.000Z (over 4 years ago)
• Default Branch: master
• Last Pushed: 2021-12-10T15:46:39.000Z (over 4 years ago)
• Last Synced: 2025-03-06T05:44:14.546Z (over 1 year ago)
• Language: Shell
• Size: 1.95 KB
• Stars: 1
• Watchers: 3
• Forks: 1
• Open Issues: 0
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README.md

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README

          
Bash CSV Parser

---------------

This repo provides a bash library called `csv.bash` which parses lines of comma-delimited-values into an array.

Here's `example/parse-stdin.bash`:

    #!/bin/bash

    source csv.bash                   # load the library

    while IFS= read -r CSV_ROW;do     # read stdin line by line into CSV_ROW

      csv_row_to_cols                 # parse CSV_ROW into CSV_COLS

      printf "%s\n" "${CSV_COLS[@]}"  # do something with CSV_COLS!

    done

It reads a stream of csv input and prints each parsed column on a new line. `csv_row_to_cols` parses the global variable `CSV_ROW` and populates the results in `CSV_COLS` (returning values via globals is necessary in bash).

    echo 'foo,"bar,baz",,"boo\"",' | example/parse-stdin.bash

    foo

    "bar,baz"

    ""

    "boo\""

    ""

This example shows the default behavior, but that can be changed by setting these global variables:

    CSV_TER=""    # terminator for rows

    CSV_DEL=","   # delimiter for columns

    CSV_QUO='"'   # quote char - quoted delimiters are ignored

    CSV_ESC="\\"  # escape char for quote char

    CSV_CON=1     # consecutive delimiters declare empty columns

    CSV_EMP='""'  # empty column replacement value

For example you can set `CSV_DEL` to tab to parse tab-delimited data. Less obviously, you could use `csv.bash` to read command arguments from input and split them into words, instead of using `xargs`, which is slow.

    #/bin/bash

    source csv.bash

    CSV_DEL=" "

    CSV_ROW='foo "bar baz"' # bash will wordsplit like this (foo,"bar,baz")

    csv_row_to_cols         # CSV_COLS=(foo,"bar baz")

    ...

All global variables are prepended with `CSV_` to avoid name clashes with other code. And that's not all the global variables either! `CSV_COLC` is set to the number of columns parsed, which is handy to use as the length of `$CSV_COLS` which bash may not report correctly if it contains empty strings. `CSV_ROWC` is an incrementing row counter, which you may want to reset to 0 if your code is parsing different inputs in the same process.