Passing TAB character as commandline parameter (to xls2scv)
I'm playing around with xls2csv (part of the catdoc application). Something simple like: xls2csv -c~ products.xls > products.txt does what I'd expect (exports the XLS, using "~" as the field separator). Any suggestions how I can make this create a tab separated file instead? I think this is more about how to pass the TAB through the shell (ie more to do with bash than xls2csv) but I could be wrong. -- Mark Rogers More Solutions Ltd :: 0845 45 89 555
On Fri, Aug 11, 2006 at 01:41:05PM +0100, Mark Rogers wrote:
I'm playing around with xls2csv (part of the catdoc application).
Something simple like: xls2csv -c~ products.xls > products.txt
does what I'd expect (exports the XLS, using "~" as the field separator).
Any suggestions how I can make this create a tab separated file instead?
I think this is more about how to pass the TAB through the shell (ie more to do with bash than xls2csv) but I could be wrong.
In some other tools I've used "\t" (sans quotes) to indicate a tab. Dunno if that works in xls2csv though. Cheers, Al.
Alan Pope wrote:
In some other tools I've used "\t" (sans quotes) to indicate a tab.
Dunno if that works in xls2csv though.
I tried that originally, but no joy. It ends up in the document as just "t". I also tried \\t and various quoting. Jan T. Kim wrote:
In an interactive bash, use Ctrl-V to quote the tab (i.e. to protect it from being interpreted as a request of command / filename completion).
This is a general feature of interactive programs based on readline, I believe.
I didn't know this trick, but it did allow me to put the tab into the commandline. My first attempt failed since I didn't quote it (and the commandline interpreter stripped the whitespace), but putting it in quotes did work. So thanks - that seems to be what I need. I did previously try -c$(echo -ne '\t') .. but that didn't work for exactly the same reasons; sure enough had I thought to try: -c"$(echo -ne '\t')" .. that also works. Which makes it all sort of academic since I'll actually build the commandline from a PHP script so inserting a genuine TAB will be no problem, but the Ctrl-V trick is a good one to know about. Thanks! [Background: I got tired of telling people to convert their XLS files into tab-separated-variable files because its surprising just how frequently they screw that up. Combining a proprietary file format with a user is a recipe for failure!] -- Mark Rogers More Solutions Ltd :: 0845 45 89 555
Alan Pope wrote:
In some other tools I've used "\t" (sans quotes) to indicate a tab.
Dunno if that works in xls2csv though.
I tried that originally, but no joy. It ends up in the document as just "t". I also tried \\t and various quoting. Jan T. Kim wrote:
In an interactive bash, use Ctrl-V to quote the tab (i.e. to protect it from being interpreted as a request of command / filename completion).
This is a general feature of interactive programs based on readline, I believe.
I didn't know this trick, but it did allow me to put the tab into the commandline. My first attempt failed since I didn't quote it (and the commandline interpreter stripped the whitespace), but putting it in quotes did work. So thanks - that seems to be what I need. I did previously try -c$(echo -ne '\t') .. but that didn't work for exactly the same reasons; sure enough had I thought to try: -c"$(echo -ne '\t')" .. that also works. Which makes it all sort of academic since I'll actually build the commandline from a PHP script so inserting a genuine TAB will be no problem, but the Ctrl-V trick is a good one to know about. Thanks! [Background: I got tired of telling people to convert their XLS files into tab-separated-variable files because its surprising just how frequently they screw that up. Combining a proprietary file format with a user is a recipe for failure!] -- Mark Rogers More Solutions Ltd :: 0845 45 89 555
On 11-Aug-06 Alan Pope wrote:
On Fri, Aug 11, 2006 at 01:41:05PM +0100, Mark Rogers wrote:
I'm playing around with xls2csv (part of the catdoc application).
Something simple like: xls2csv -c~ products.xls > products.txt
does what I'd expect (exports the XLS, using "~" as the field separator).
Any suggestions how I can make this create a tab separated file instead?
I think this is more about how to pass the TAB through the shell (ie more to do with bash than xls2csv) but I could be wrong.
In some other tools I've used "\t" (sans quotes) to indicate a tab.
Dunno if that works in xls2csv though.
Cheers, Al.
Assuming from the description that after xls2csv -c~ products.xls > products.txt the only occurrences of "~" in products.txt is as a field separator, you should be able to straightforwardly us 'tr' to change it to "\t": xls2csv -c~ products.xls | tr "~" "\t" > products.txt E.g. $ cat temp A~B~C~D~E~F~G A~B~C~D~E~F~G A~B~C~D~E~F~G A~B~C~D~E~F~G A~B~C~D~E~F~G A~B~C~D~E~F~G $ cat temp | tr "~" "\t" > temp2 $ cat temp2 A B C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C D E F G $ od -c temp2 0000000 A \t B \t C \t D \t E \t F \t G \n A \t 0000020 B \t C \t D \t E \t F \t G \n A \t B \t 0000040 C \t D \t E \t F \t G \n A \t B \t C \t 0000060 D \t E \t F \t G \n A \t B \t C \t D \t 0000100 E \t F \t G \n A \t B \t C \t D \t E \t 0000120 F \t G \n just as it should be! Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 11-Aug-06 Time: 14:38:03 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
On Fri, Aug 11, 2006 at 01:41:05PM +0100, Mark Rogers wrote:
I'm playing around with xls2csv (part of the catdoc application).
Something simple like: xls2csv -c~ products.xls > products.txt
does what I'd expect (exports the XLS, using "~" as the field separator).
Any suggestions how I can make this create a tab separated file instead?
I think this is more about how to pass the TAB through the shell (ie more to do with bash than xls2csv) but I could be wrong.
In an interactive bash, use Ctrl-V to quote the tab (i.e. to protect it from being interpreted as a request of command / filename completion). This is a general feature of interactive programs based on readline, I believe. Best regards, Jan -- +- Jan T. Kim -------------------------------------------------------+ | email: jtk@cmp.uea.ac.uk | | WWW: http://www.cmp.uea.ac.uk/people/jtk | *-----=< hierarchical systems are for files, not for humans >=-----*
participants (5)
-
Alan Pope -
Jan T. Kim -
Mark Rogers -
Mark Rogers -
Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk