Scripting Question
Patton Echols
p.echols at comcast.net
Sat Feb 14 03:49:08 UTC 2009
On 02/13/2009 06:44 PM, Lucio M Nicolosi wrote:
> Patton Echols wrote:
>
>> I have a fairly massive flat file, comma delimited, that I want to
>> extract info from. Specifically, I want to extract the first and last
>> name and email addresses for those who have them to a new file with just
>> that info. (The windows database program that this comes from simply
>> will not do it) I can grep the file for the @ symbol to at least
>> exclude the lines without an email address (or the @ symbol in the notes
>> field) But if I can figure this out, I can also adapt what I learn for
>> the next time. Can anyone point me in the right direction for my "light
>> reading?"
>>
>> By the way, I used 'head' to get the first line, with the field names.
>> This is the first of about 2300 records, the reason not to do it by hand.
>>
>> patton at laptop:~$ head -1 contacts.txt
>> "Business Title","First Name","Middle Name","Last Name","","Business
>> Company Name","","Business Title","Business Street 1","Business Street
>> 2","Business Street 3","Business City","Business State","Business
>> Zip","Business Country","Home Street 1","Home Street 2","Home Street
>> 3","Home City","Home State","Home Zip","Home Country","Other Street
>> 1","Other Street 2","Other Street 3","Other City","Other State","Other
>> Zip","Other Country","Assistant Phone","Business Fax Number","Business
>> Phone","Business 2 Phone","","Car Phone","","Home Fax Number","Home
>> Phone","Home 2 Phone","ISDN Phone","Mobile Phone","Other Fax
>> Number","Other Phone","Pager
>> Phone","","","","","","","","","","","","","Business Email","","Home
>> Email","","Other
>> Email","","","","","","","","","","","","Notes","","","","","","","","","","","","","","Business
>> Web Page"
>>
>>
>>
>>
> Sure it's not an elegant solution, but couldn't you just import the
> comma delimited data to a worksheet and edit it? OpenOffice or Symphony
> would do it.
>
> L.
>
>
I could, but I end up having to do something like this periodically. I
hoped to learn a quicker way to approach it. Since I am on a deadline
this time around, I may grep the file as I said, then use a OO-calc to
delete the columns I don't want.
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