Determining file delimiter

[san_dwh]

I have a text file in unix box. i dont know which field delemeter is used. how to find out delemeter used and how many colomns are there?.

Please help me

[samyamkrishna]

did you try opening the file and checking

[Abhijeet1980]

Dear san,

Firstly, no text file is delimited even if we call it a delimited file.

Lastly, this point is very important to understand.
Delimiter is readers way of parsing the text contained within by assuming a delimiter.

e.g. For argument sake, let us take the following
A,B,C
E,B,G
1,B,3
7,B,9

Anybody, with some prliminary knowledge can say this is a comma separated file.

1. If this file is read with comma as the delimiter, parser shall produce 3 fields.
2. If the same file is read with B as the delimiter, parser shall produce 2 fields.

I hope, you understand.

Kind regards,
Abhijit Gaikwad

[chulett]

how to find out delemeter used and how many colomns are there?

Two basic ways:

1. As noted, use 'vi' to open it up and look at it. Or 'head -10' perhaps.
2. Ask whomever produced and/or sent the file to you.

The second way will be more important if the file has no 'header' record.

[ray.wurlod]

By inspection alone you can not answer this question. You need the metadata. This should be able to be obtained from whoever created the file.