Gurus help needed Windows batch script to convert text file into csv file

Hi folks
Any Windows Gurus out there
I'm trying to replicate this Linux process to run in batch to convert a text file into CSV on Windows and then into EXCEL - once I've got the CSV file then I'm happy to run EXCEL normally

sed 's/ \+/,/g' ifile.txt > ofile.csv

my input file is a list of directories and files via ls -Rl >ifile.txt


so I've got something like this per directory



I'm sure it's a doddle in Windows but I'm totally not used to Windows batch things !!!

cheers
jimbo

Maybe no help but I just did an Export of my Logins in my browser and saved as a .csv file. One thing I saw opening it in Notepad shows every item that belongs in a cell in a spreadsheet has double-quotes at their beginning and their end with the comma separating them between the double-quotes as in,
"https://secure.techrepublic.com","[email protected]","xxxxxxxxxxx",,"https://secure.techrepublic.com","{21a18294-e47a-4f40-80bd-,
the xxx's indicate user name and password for the site. The data between the double-quotes go into a cell by itself and the comma jumps to the next cell to enter following data. Two commas or more in a row indicate a blank cell or cells

As for a .bat/batch file, I use them mostly to run commands, create a .bat file once and don't have to keep re-typing a list of commands to be run when doing it frequently.

Maybe something like this:

jimbo45 said:

Hi folks
Any Windows Gurus out there
I'm trying to replicate this Linux process to run in batch to convert a text file into CSV on Windows and then into EXCEL - once I've got the CSV file then I'm happy to run EXCEL normally

sed 's/ \+/,/g' ifile.txt > ofile.csv

my input file is a list of directories and files via ls -Rl >ifile.txt
View attachment 26383

so I've got something like this per directory

View attachment 26384

I'm sure it's a doddle in Windows but I'm totally not used to Windows batch things !!!

cheers
jimbo

Click to expand...

You can do that directly in excel, then save it as CSV if that is what you want. Home -> data -> From text/CSV

Or you could use windows susbsystem for linux to do the sed.

But the first is the simplest unless you have a batch of files to convert.

Or you could do this with Powershell

Get-ChildItem *.txt | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace '.txt','.csv' }

play2mefish said:

Or you could do this with Powershell

Get-ChildItem *.txt | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace '.txt','.csv' }

Click to expand...

Thanks

Doing it in EXCEL is fine for small worksheets but powershell is a great way.

Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is OK too but that means installing it and some of the HYPER-V Virtual machine infrastructure which I don't really want on a lean and mean system which I mainly use for Office type apps photoshop and some work orientated applications.

cheers
jimbo

I've been using this for file format conversions.. it's fast and free

The previously offered powershell command renames the file without altering the contents. Try this:


Note that after the -replace, there are 2 spaces before the asterisk. This should be equivalent to your sed command, replacing every sequence of 1 or more spaces with a single comma on each line of ifile.txt, writing the output to ofile.csv.