Dear Perl Gurus,

I am no expert in Perl but I know that my requirement can only be done using perl (versus shell script) for this case. I have a CSV file which looks like the one in "Input" section. It has few fields which have double-quoted field AND also have a "," (comma) inside it. I need to remove the commans which are in a set of double quotes as shown in output section.

Could someone please help me to find out a way to do this? Please note that in one line, there may be multiple fields which have double-quotes (eg line 2). I need to remove comma only in double-quoted fields - not the field separators.

Thanks, VS95054

Input:

serial number,name, designation, division, city
1, Tom, IT Manager, "IT Deptt, XYZ company", San Jose
2, Peter, "SOX Auditor, Internal", "ABC Deptt, Amazon Inc", Seattle
3, Randy, "Quality Engineer, Prod", MIS, Santa Clara

[download]

Output:

serial number,name, designation, division, city
1, Tom, IT Manager, "IT Deptt XYZ company", San Jose
2, Peter, "SOX Auditor Internal", "ABC Deptt Amazon Inc", Seattle
3, Randy, "Quality Engineer Prod", MIS, Santa Clara

[download]

In reply to Need help with double quotes and CSV file processing by vs95054

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.