Remove first comma from a csv file in bash

Question

I have a csv file in which some lines start with a comma, so I want to remove all of them.

Example: In this line: ,"a","b","c", I want to remove the first comma.

How do I do this in bash?

Answer 1

You can use this sed:

sed -i '' 's/^[[:blank:]]*,//' file.csv

^[[:blank:]]*, will match comma at line start with optional whitespaces before comma.

Answer 2

try this;

sed 's/^,//' csvFile > newCSVfile

Ex;

user@host:/tmp$ echo ',"a","b","c"' | sed 's/^,//'
"a","b","c"

Answer 3

Do not use "g" flag in sed, it will help you in removing only first matching ","

echo ',"a","b","c"' | sed 's/^,//'

For file :

sed -i.bak 's/^,//' infile.log