Question

i have a file with 3 columns, the 2nd column is lat/long and may or may not have data.

2012-01-10 21:27:52.811,,ABC   -- No lat/long
2012-01-10 21:27:52.811,37.8889329,-112.1876328,XYZ  -- with lat long

Can some one help me with a sed/awk/perl to transform it to

2012-01-10 21:27:52.811,"37.8889329,-112.1876328",XYZ

In all other cases it should not add any double quotes

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

I would probably do something like this, using awk:

% echo '2012-01-10 21:27:52.811,,ABC   -- No lat/long
2012-01-10 21:27:52.811,37.8889329,-112.1876328,XYZ  -- with lat long
' | awk -F',' -v OFS=','  '
$2 && $3 {
    $2 = "\"" $2
    $3 = $3 "\""
}

1
'
2012-01-10 21:27:52.811,,ABC   -- No lat/long
2012-01-10 21:27:52.811,"37.8889329,-112.1876328",XYZ  -- with lat long

This assumes that the fields are comma-delimited on the way in and the way out.

If the second and third fields are populated then

• Put a " before the second field
• Put a " after the third field

Print all lines (1).

There are a lot of assumptions here, so you’ll have to dig out the sed & awk book and tweak this to meet your needs.