Adding Column Headers in CSV with AWK in Terminal

Question

Hello I'm trying to add column headers in my CSV file with awk in terminal.

Currently displays:

Michael, [email protected], Seattle, Washington, detail1, detail2, detail3

Desired format:

Name, Email, City, State, more1, more2, more3etc
Michael, [email protected], Seattle, Washington, detail1, detail2, detail3,

Have tried something like this, but I end up getting "Illegal Statement at Source line 2":

awk 'BEGIN {FS=",";OFS=","; print "Rating,Restaurant,Address,Landline,Mobile,Cuisine,Website,LatDD,LonDD"}
NR >1 {print ",",,,",",",", }' Restaurants.txt > Restaurants_newer.txt

Does this problem reduce to "Insert a line at the beginning of my file"? — Benjamin W.
– Benjamin W., Commented May 13, 2016 at 17:39
And why is the first line in the desired format different from what you try to insert in your awk command? — Benjamin W.
– Benjamin W., Commented May 13, 2016 at 17:40
for BEGIN use print "Rating", "Restaurant" and so on, with each header as one string and the different headers separated by a comma. Replace the second NR >1 ... ,} with {print } or just 1. — Lars Fischer
– Lars Fischer, Commented May 13, 2016 at 17:54

karakfa · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-13 17:57:03Z

6

this will do

sed '1iName, Email, City, State, more1, more2, more3etc' file > newfile

can be done in place too

sed -i '1iName, Email, City, State, more1, more2, more3etc' file

or

{ echo 'Name, Email, City, State, more1, more2, more3etc'; cat file; } > newfile

answered May 13, 2016 at 17:57

karakfa

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2 Comments

Michael Over a year ago

Thanks for your help, but... I'm gettings this on terminal: > command i expects \ followed by text

Michael Over a year ago

Not sure, and OSX.

Ed Morton · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-13 18:20:12Z

3

awk '
BEGIN { OFS=", "; print "Name", "Email", "City", "State", "more1", "more2", "more3etc" }
{ print $0, "" }
' file

answered May 13, 2016 at 18:20

Ed Morton

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2 Comments

Michael Over a year ago

Hmmm, this isn't working. My CSV file still shows up blank after I tried this. Thanks though.

Ed Morton Over a year ago

The script cannot do what you claim it is doing. When you say "My CSV file..." idk if you mean your input file or your output file but that script cannot empty your input file since it doesn't write to it and it cannot produce an empty output file since the BEGIN section will print a line no matter what. You're doing something wrong so edit your question to copy/paste the full command line you are running and the output it produces so we can see what you're doing to help you debug it.

Ani Menon · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-13 19:00:18Z

1

Using AWK :

awk 'BEGIN{print "Name, Email, City, State, more1, more2, more3 .."}1' Restaurants.txt

OR

Try this :

echo "Name, Email, City, State, more1, more2, more3 .." >> Restaurants_newer.txt
cat Restaurants.txt >> Restaurants_newer.txt

That is redirect the header line & the file output into a file.

OR

{ printf 'Name, Email, City, State, more1, more2, more3 ..'; cat Restaurants.txt; } > Restaurants_newer.txt

edited May 13, 2016 at 19:00

answered May 13, 2016 at 18:06

Ani Menon

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1 Comment

Michael Over a year ago

Thanks for your help, but... I'm gettings this on terminal: > command i expects \ followed by text

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