This entry is part 12 of 19 in the Bash-whacking series

After trying various sed/awk recipes to convert from fixed-width to CSV, I found a Python script that works well.

Here it is, from http://code.activestate.com/recipes/452503-convert-db-fixed-width-output-to-csv-format/ 

 
## {{{ http://code.activestate.com/recipes/452503/ (r1)
# Ian Maurer 
# http://itmaurer.com/
# Convert a Fixed Width file to a CSV with Headers
#
# Requires following format:
#
# header1      header2 header3
# ------------ ------- ----------------
# data_a1      data_a2 data_a3
 
def writerow(ofile, row):
    for i in range(len(row)):
        row[i] = '"' + row[i].replace('"', '') + '"'
    data = ",".join(row)
    ofile.write(data)
    ofile.write("\n")
 
def convert(ifile, ofile):
    header = ifile.readline().strip()
    while not header:
        header = ifile.readline().strip()
 
    hticks = ifile.readline().strip()
    csizes = [len(cticks) for cticks in hticks.split()]
 
    line = header
    while line:
 
        start, row = 0, []
        for csize in csizes:
            column = line[start:start+csize].strip()
            row.append(column)
            start = start + csize + 1
 
        writerow(ofile, row)
        line = ifile.readline().strip()
 
if __name__ == "__main__":
    import sys
    if len(sys.argv) == 3:
        ifile = open(sys.argv[1], "r")
        ofile = open(sys.argv[2], "w+")
        convert(ifile, ofile)
 
    else:
        print "Usage: python convert.py <input> <output>"
## end of http://code.activestate.com/recipes/452503/ }}}

Bash-whacking

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