Skip to main content

Remove Quotes from a File

This section explains how to use awk to remove all double quotes from a text file.

Interactive Command​

Remove Quotes Command
awk '{
  gsub(/"/, "")
  print
}' yourfile.txt > yourfile_no_quotes.txt

Breakdown​

  1. awk '{...}' yourfile.txt:
    • This part runs the awk command on the input file, where the code inside {} is applied to each line of the file.
  2. gsub(/"/, ""):
    • gsub is a function in awk that stands for "global substitution."
    • The first argument /"/ is the pattern to search for, which is a double-quote character.
    • The second argument "" is the replacement string, which in this case is empty, meaning that all double-quote characters are removed from the line.
  3. print:
    • After removing all double-quote characters, awk prints the modified line.

Example​

Let's see an example of how this command works:

Remove Quotes Example
echo 'column1, column2
"Hello", "world"
"This is, "a test"' > example.txt && awk '{
  gsub(/"/, "")
  print
}' example.txt > example_no_quotes.txt && cat example_no_quotes.txt

This command creates an example input file, processes it to remove quotes, and then displays the contents of the output file.

Sample Output:
column1, column2
Hello, world
This is, a test

As you can see, all double quotes have been removed from the input, resulting in a clean output without any quotation marks.