Change csv file delimiter in unix

Question

I have a number of .csv files with tab delimiter and now I want to change the delimiter. When I use the below script it does not change the file. Please help me with the script.

file_mask=$1
from_delim=$2
to_delim=$3
for i in `ls $file_mask*`
do
sed -i 's|$from_delim|$to_delim|g' $i
done

Answer 1

Do not use sed or tr for this, use csvtool (available from common repositories). If you have TABs in strings the above simple tools will choke. You will need to use awk to start counting quotes, etc. It's gonna be a mess with these basic tools.

To replace TABs with e.g. semi-colons with csvtool including all corner cases is simple:

csvtool -t TAB -u ';' cat $ifile -o $ofile

With $ifile the input file and $ofile the output file.