fastest way convert tab-delimited file to csv in linux
If you're worried about embedded commas then you'll need to use a slightly more intelligent method. Here's a Python script that takes TSV lines from stdin and writes CSV lines to stdout:
import sysimport csvtabin = csv.reader(sys.stdin, dialect=csv.excel_tab)commaout = csv.writer(sys.stdout, dialect=csv.excel)for row in tabin: commaout.writerow(row)Run it from a shell as follows:
python script.py < input.tsv > output.csv
If all you need to do is translate all tab characters to comma characters, tr is probably the way to go.
The blank space here is a literal tab:
$ echo "hello world" | tr "\\t" ","hello,worldOf course, if you have embedded tabs inside string literals in the file, this will incorrectly translate those as well; but embedded literal tabs would be fairly uncommon.