Remove "[ and ]" from csv file using sed

Question

I have a row such as this

0,"['low', 'low', 'low']","['better', 'better', 'better', 'better', 'better', 'better']","['True', 'True', 'True', 'True', 'True', 'True', 'True']"

And I'd like to get rid of the "[ ] from teach of the line. Right now I am separately running

sed -i 's/\"//g' File.csv

sed -i 's/\[/ /g' File.csv

sed -i 's/\]//g' File.csv

to get

0, 'low', 'low', 'low', 'better', 'better', 'better', 'better', 'better', 'better', 'True', 'True', 'True', 'True', 'True', 'True', 'True'

Is there an efficient way of doing this?

Answer 1

Sure.

Sticking with GNU sed:

sed -i 's/[]"[]//g' File.csv

For non-GNU sed (such as the BSD version that ships with OS X), the -i (in-place) option is not available, so you have to write to a new file and then replace:

sed 's/[]"[]//g' File.csv >NewFile.csv && mv NewFile.csv File.csv

There are other commands you can use in that case; the one with the shortest command line to do this (not counting the redirection and renaming) is probably tr:

tr -d '[]"' <File.csv >NewFile.csv && mv NewFile.csv File.csv

Explanation of the sed regular expression:

Any set of characters inside [...] brackets creates a "character class" that is a shorthand for single-character alternation. That is, the meaning of [abc] is "a or b or c". If you want to include a literal [ or ] inside a character class, you can do so by placing the bracket immediately next to the opposite one that encloses the character class: []abc] includes a, b, c, and ], while [abc[] includes a, b, c and [. So []"[] includes [, ", and ].