Question

I have a table with comma delimited columns and I want to separate the comma delimited values in my specified column to new rows. For example, the given table is

Name Start Name2

A 1,2 X,a

B 5 Y,b

C 6,7,8 Z,c

And I need to separate the comma delimited values in column 2 to get the table below

Name Start Name2

A 1 X,a

A 2 X,a

B 5 Y,b

C 6 Z,c

C 7 Z,c

C 8 Z,c

I am wondering if there is any solution with shell script, so that I can create a workflow pipe. Note: the original table may contain more than 3 columns.

Answer 1

This bash solution produces your desired output

{
     read header; echo "$header"
     while read name start rest; do
         for elem in $(tr , " " <<< "$start"); do
             echo "$name $elem $rest"
         done
     done
} << END
Name Start Name2
A 1,2 X,a
B 5 Y,b
C 6,7,8 Z,c
END

less verbose

awk 'NR==1 {print; next} {split($2,a,/,/); for (i in a) {$2=a[i]; print}}'