CODEWITHSUNDEEP
stringbashawksedquotes
dHumphrey
dHumphrey

Reputation: 307

Remove Quotes awk or sed

I have a CSV file and want to only remove all quotes unless inside of a string.

Example:

"I have a file that says "need help" please"

I want to remove all double quotes in the text unless inside of double quotes. Example, don't remove the quotes around "need help"

Anyone have a clue?

I'm getting pretty good at awk and sed commands but this one stumped me.

Thanks for the help!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1775

Answers (2)

Ed Morton
Ed Morton

Reputation: 204731

This may or may not do what you want depending on your CSV format and requirements:

$ cat file
"I have a file that says "need help" please"
"a "b" c","d "e" f"
$
$ awk -F'","' -v OFS=, '{$1=$1;gsub(/^"|"$/,"")}1' file
I have a file that says "need help" please
a "b" c,d "e" f

Upvotes: 2

Tiago Lopo
Tiago Lopo

Reputation: 7969

Use grep -Po '".*?"':

echo 'this is a test "I need help" and "it has to be now"' | grep -Po '".*?"'
"I need help"
"it has to be now"

Upvotes: 0

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