Question

If I had a string with escaped commas like so:

a,b,{c\,d\,e},f,g

How might I use awk to parse that into the following items?

a
b
{c\,d\,e}
f
g

Answer 1

{
   split($0, a, /,/)
   j=1
   for(i=1; i<=length(a); ++i) {
      if(match(b[j], /\\$/)) {
         b[j]=b[j] "," a[i]
      } else {
         b[++j] = a[i]
      }
   }
   for(k=2; k<=length(b); ++k) {
      print b[k]
   }
}

1. Split into array a, using ‘,‘ as delimiter
2. Build array b from a, merging lines that end in ‘\‘
3. Print array b (Note: Starts at 2 since first item is blank)

This solution presumes (for now) that ‘,‘ is the only character that is ever escaped with ‘\‘–that is, there is no need to handle any \\ in the input, nor weird combinations such as \\\,\\,\\\\,,\,.