"grep" a csv file including multi-lines fields? - shell

Question

file.csv:
XA90;"standard"
XA100;"this is
the multi-line"
XA110;"other standard"
I want to grep the "XA100" entry like this:
grep XA100 file.csv
to obtain this result:
XA100;"this is
the multi-line"
but grep return only one line:
XA100;"this is
source.csv contains 3 entries.
The "XA100" entry contain a multi-line field.
And grep doesn't seem to be the right tool to "grep" CSV file including multilines fields.
Do you know the way to make the job ?
Edit: the real world file contains many columns. The researched term can be in any column (not at begin of line, nor at the begin of field). All fields are encapsulated by ". Any field can contain a multi-line, from 1 line to any, and this cannot be predicted.

Answer 1

Give this line a try:
awk '/^XA100;/{p=1}p;p&&/"$/{p=0}' file
I extended your example a bit:
kent$ cat f
XA90;"standard"
XA100;"this is
the
multi-
line"
XA110;"other standard"
kent$ awk '/^XA100;/{p=1}p;p&&/"$/{p=0}' f
XA100;"this is
the
multi-
line"

Answer 2

In the comments you mention: In the real world file, each line start with ". I assume they also end with " and present you this:
Test file:
$ cat file
"single line"
"multi-
lined"
Code and outputs:
$ awk 'BEGIN{RS=ORS="\"\n"} /single/' file
"single line"
$ awk 'BEGIN{RS=ORS="\"\n"} /m/' file
"multi-
lined"
You can also parametrize the search:
$ awk -v s="multi" 'BEGIN{RS=ORS="\"\n"} match($0,s)' file
"multi-
lined"

Answer 3

try:
Solution 1:
awk -v RS="XA" 'NR==3{gsub(/$\n$/,"");print RS $0}' Input_file
Making Record separator as string XA then looking for line 3rd here and then globally substituting the $\n$(which is to remove the extra line at the end of the line) with NULL. Then printing the Record Separator with the current line.
Solution 2:
awk '/XA100/{print;getline;while($0 !~ /^XA/){print;getline}}' Input_file
Looking for string XA100 then printing the current line and using getline to go to next line, using while loop then which will run and print the lines until a line is starting from XA.

Answer 4

If this file was exported from MS-Excel or similar then lines end with \r\n while the newlines inside quotes are just \ns so then all you need is:
$ awk -v RS='\r\n' '/XA100/' file
XA100;"this is
the multi-line"
The above uses GNU awk for multi-char RS. On some platforms, e.g. cygwin, you'll have to add -v BINMODE=3 so gawk sees the \rs rather than them getting stripped by underlying C primitives.
Otherwise, it's extremely hard to parse CSV files in general without a real CSV parser (which awk currently doesn't have but is in the works for GNU awk) but you could do this (again with GNU awk for multi-char RS):
$ cat file
XA90;"standard"
XA100;"this is
the multi-line"
XA110;"other standard"
$ awk -v RS="\"[^\"]*\"" -v ORS= '{gsub(/\n/," ",RT); print $0 RT}' file
XA90;"standard"
XA100;"this is the multi-line"
XA110;"other standard"
to replace all newlines within quotes with blank chars and then process it as regular 1-line-per-record file.

Answer 5

Using PS response, this works for the small example:
sed 's/^X/\n&/' file.csv | awk -v RS= '/XA100/ {print}'
For my real world CSV file, with many columns, with researched term anywhere, with unknown count of multi-lines, with characters " replaced by "", with multi-lines lines beginning with ", with all fields encapsulated by ", this works. Note the exclusion of the second character " in sed part:
sed 's/^"[^"]/\n&/' file.csv | awk -v RS= '/RESEARCH_TERM/ {print}'
Because first column of any entry cannot start with "". First column allways looks like "XXXXXXXXX", where X is any character but ".
Thank you all for so much responses, maybe others solutions are working depending the CSV file format you use.