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I have a script that generates a .txt file.

That file have tab-delimited columns. The number of columns vary depending on the input file.

How can I convert that .txt file to csv format? I want to have the columns in the .txt file be in separate columns in the csv file.

sample:

.txt file:

header1    header2   header3            header4
1          B         423.sagd.32        333 
2          A         YXTS.a324.gfd33    555 
3          F         343.asr            222
4          D         cbs.98st.asd       4232

CSV file (expected output):

       A          B         C                  D 
 1     header1    header2   header3            header4
 2     1          B         423.sagd.32        333 
 3     2          A         YXTS.a324.gfd33    555 
 4     3          F         343.asr            222
 5     4          D         cbs.98st.asd       4232

Note: The file do not have a fixed number of columns or rows.

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  • 3
    What do you mean with expected output if that's not clearly not a CSV? Commented Dec 22, 2016 at 16:47
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    CSV means Comma-Separated Values. The exemplified output is not a CSV file. Commented Dec 22, 2016 at 16:49

2 Answers 2

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There is nothing magical about a .csv file. It just means comma (occasionally tab) separated values.

mv myfile.txt myfile.csv

done

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  • I tried that but when I look at the csv file, all the columns in the .txt file are all in column A when I open the csv file in excel. Commented Dec 22, 2016 at 16:54
  • Are you using spaces or tabs? Commented Dec 22, 2016 at 16:57
  • i am using tabs Commented Dec 22, 2016 at 16:58
  • Hmm... this seems to be specific to how Excel is choosing to import the data. Im sure you can set the defaults somewhere. I just tried it out and if you import the csv it will delimit properly, but opening it doesn't seem to. This is an excel setting however and not linux related. Just as a side note, LibreOffice Calc seems to parse the delimiters correctly every time for me. Commented Dec 22, 2016 at 17:04
  • @pinkpostit you can try comma as a separator. For me tabs and spaces do not work, but comma does Commented Dec 8, 2022 at 11:38
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To transform a tab-delimited file ta a comma-delimited file:

$ tr '\t' ',' <input.txt >output.csv

This will do a naive replacement of all tabs into commas.

If your data contains commas already, then those data fields needs to be quoted. This is a non-trivial operation. It is best to use a CSV-aware tool to do it, like csvkit:

$ csvformat -t input.txt >output.csv
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