Question

How can I trim these 7 columns down to 5 columns, by running some script of sorts.

I recall you can do this using regex / php but buggered if I can recall how we did it.

Example code ( of a GEO IP db ( 115,000 lines )

"3231296768","3231297023","ripencc","702518400","EU","EU","European Union"
"3231297024","3231297279","ripencc","441763200","EU","EU","European Union"
"3231297280","3231297535","ripencc","702518400","EU","EU","European Union"
"3231297536","3231297791","ripencc","702518400","EU","EU","European Union"
"3231297792","3231298047","ripencc","702518400","EU","EU","European Union"
"3231298048","3231298303","ripencc","702518400","EU","EU","European Union"
"3231298304","3231298559","ripencc","702518400","EU","EU","European Union"

I need to remove columns 3 and 4 from every line.

Any help appreciated.

Answer 1

While jimw’s answer is the best answer in general, if you want a pure PHP solution I would suggest the following:

$input = 'input.txt';
$output = 'output.txt';

if (false !== ($ih = fopen($input, 'r'))) {
    $oh = fopen($output, 'w');

    while (false !== ($data = fgetcsv($ih))) {
        // this is where you build your new row
        $outputData = array($data[0], $data[1], $data[4], $data[5], $data[6]);
        fputcsv($oh, $outputData);
    }

    fclose($ih);
    fclose($oh);
}