Not knowing exactly what your intent is, or what you have, my first thought was for you to use the OpenOffice Spreadsheet. I use this often to read CSV files as it formats them easily into columns - and will save them as CSV again rather simply. An input file may look something like this: "Name","Address","City","State","Zip" "Jack Chastain","123 fourth street","Newburgh","NY",12345 "Another Name","456 Seventh st","Wallkill","NY",98765
When this file is opened by the Spreadsheet, it provides an import system that allow you to specify the Character set (I just set it to US ASCII, The default is Unicode 8) and the Seperator options. It appears to already know that the file is separated by commas, but there may be conditions where this is different. There is a preview that shows what the import would look like, along with ability to eliminate some columns if you wish, as well as instruction as to which row to begin the import from. Handy and easy. My second thought was a little more of a reach - same idea maybe, but use Google Docs to read in the file. Really this is pretty much the same - you are still using a spreadsheet interface, I think - but it might be available in the (unlikely??) event you don't wish to - or don't have - OpenOffice. I haven't been around many of you enough yet to know who has what - but it seems like OO should be nearly as prevalent as vim or any other decent text pro processor - but I try not to make too many assumptions. I uploaded the data to Google Docs ( http://docs.google.com ) and once uploaded, it opened in a spreadsheet-like format. Seems kind of like what you are asking for. Of course, if you have a file that looks more like this: Name Address City State Zip ... then none of the above will do much for you until you first get your data oriented in a more normalised form. Of course, there are real Databases for this sort of thing as well. Isn't there going to be a talk for something like that tomorrow?? ;-) JC On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 3:56 PM, Orion Vianna <[email protected]>wrote: > I have a big word file with many addresses/phone numbers, etc, that I'm > trying to make a csv file so I can export to other places. > I quickly tried to find a vim plug-in but no luck. > Is there any editor out there that lets me edit a regular text file and > automatically preview it as a csv displayed like a table? > > Thanks > Orion > _______________________________________________ > Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org > http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug > Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium > Jan 7 - Ruby on Rails > Feb 4 - TBD > -- Eschew obfuscation and pompous prolixity. Light a man a fire, he is warm for the night. Light a man afire, he is warm for the rest of his life. _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Jan 7 - Ruby on Rails Feb 4 - TBD
