parse a csv file that contains commans in the fields with awk

Question

i have to use awk to print out 4 different columns in a csv file. The problem is the strings are in a $x,xxx.xx format. When I run the regular awk command.

awk -F, {print $1} testfile.csv 

my output `ends up looking like

307.00
$132.34
30.23

What am I doing wrong.

"$141,818.88","$52,831,578.53","$52,788,069.53" this is roughly the input. The file I have to parse is 90,000 rows and about 40 columns This is how the input is laid out or at least the parts of it that I have to deal with. Sorry if I made you think this wasn't what I was talking about.

If the input is "$307.00","$132.34","$30.23" I want the output to be in a

$307.00
$132.34
$30.23

Answer 1

Oddly enough I had to tackle this problem some time ago and I kept the code around to do it. You almost had it, but you need to get a bit tricky with your field separator(s).

awk -F'","|^"|"$' '{print $2}' testfile.csv 

Input

# cat testfile.csv
"$141,818.88","$52,831,578.53","$52,788,069.53"
"$2,558.20","$482,619.11","$9,687,142.69"
"$786.48","$8,568,159.41","$159,180,818.00"

Output

# awk -F'","|^"|"$' '{print $2}' testfile.csv
$141,818.88
$2,558.20
$786.48

You'll note that the "first" field is actually $2 because of the field separator ^". Small price to pay for a short 1-liner if you ask me.