vi vim Remove Replace comma commas inside quotes double quotation Regular Expression CSV Comma separated values

vi vim Remove Replace comma commas inside quotes double quotation Regular Expression CSV Comma separated values

Wow, I finally made it! It took me few days of night and coffee to come up this solution. This vi / vim Regular Expression can replace / substitute the commas inside quotes (substitute inside substitute). CSV Comma separated values

Sample Text:

"Hello,World", "vi, vim, gvim, is a really fun editor"
"I am really, really, really, excited", "it,made,my,day."

Replace Commas Inside Quotes:

%s/"\([^"]\+\)"/\=substitute(submatch(0), ',', '_', 'g')/g

Sample Output:

"Hello_World", "vi_ vim_ gvim_ is a really fun editor"
"I am really_ really_ really_ excited", "it_made_my_day."

Run it in batch script:

@echo off

vim -S replace5.vim test.txt

:: http://gala4th.blogspot.com/2008/12/vi-vim-remove-replace-comma-commas.html

echo Done!
PAUSE

replace5.vim:

:set nobackup
:argdo! %s/"\([^"]\+\)"/\=substitute(submatch(0), ',', '_', 'g')/g  update
:wq

Final Version:

@echo off

:: replace7.vim does three things:
:: 1) remove the first line.
:: 2) replace all commas inside quotes to underscore (_)
:: 3) Remove all quotes
vim -S replace7.vim test.txt

:: http://gala4th.blogspot.com/2008/12/vi-vim-remove-replace-comma-commas.html

echo Done!
PAUSE

replace7.vim

:set nobackup
:argdo! 1,1s/^.\+\n//
:argdo! %s/"\([^"]\+\)"/\=substitute(submatch(0), ',', '_', 'g')/g
:argdo! %s/"//g | update
:wq

Perl Version:

#!C:\Perl\bin\perl.exe

$str = '123, "how, are, you", "i, am", "fine, thank, you, and, you"';
$str=~ s/("[^"]+")/remove($1,$1)/eg;
print $str;

sub remove {
 my( $self, $s ) = @_;

 # find: quote, comma, smart quote (left), smart quote (right)
 # replace: nothing
 # note: can use {$1} to separate other text
 $s =~ s/"|,|\x93|\x94//g;
 return $s;
}

See Also: http://gala4th.blogspot.com/2008/12/vi-vim-gvim-find-search-replace-string.html

Reference:
http://www.nminus.org/vim/
http://www.geocities.com/volontir/
http://www.guckes.net/vi/substitute.html
http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/change.html
http://www.vim.org/htmldoc/pattern.html
http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Using_an_expression_in_substitute_command
http://www.jason.mock.ws/wordpress/2005/10/28/vim-tips