csvclean - Man Page

• Clean a CSV file: csvclean bad.csv
• List locations of syntax errors in a CSV file: csvclean -n bad.csv

tldr.sh

Cleans a CSV file of common syntax errors:

• reports rows that have a different number of columns than the header row
• attempts to correct the CSV by joining short rows into a single row

Note that every csvkit tool does the following:

• removes optional quote characters, unless the –quoting (-u) option is set to change this behavior
• changes the field delimiter to a comma, if the input delimiter is set with the –delimiter (-d) or –tabs (-t) options
• changes the record delimiter to a line feed (LF or \n)
• changes the quote character to a double-quotation mark, if the character is set with the –quotechar (-q) option
• changes the character encoding to UTF-8, if the input encoding is set with the –encoding (-e) option

Outputs [basename]_out.csv and [basename]_err.csv, the former containing all valid rows and the latter containing all error rows along with line numbers and descriptions:

usage: csvclean [-h] [-d DELIMITER] [-t] [-q QUOTECHAR] [-u {0,1,2,3}] [-b]
                [-p ESCAPECHAR] [-z FIELD_SIZE_LIMIT] [-e ENCODING] [-S] [-H]
                [-K SKIP_LINES] [-v] [-l] [--zero] [-V] [-n]
                [FILE]

Fix common errors in a CSV file.

positional arguments:
  FILE                  The CSV file to operate on. If omitted, will accept
                        input as piped data via STDIN.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -n, --dry-run         Do not create output files. Information about what
                        would have been done will be printed to STDERR.

See also: Arguments common to all tools.

Test a file with known bad rows:

csvclean -n examples/bad.csv

Line 1: Expected 3 columns, found 4 columns
Line 2: Expected 3 columns, found 2 columns

To change the line ending from line feed (LF or \n) to carriage return and line feed (CRLF or \r\n) use:

csvformat -M $'\r\n' examples/dummy.csv

Christopher Groskopf

2024, Christopher Groskopf