[SOLVED] How to format bash SED/AWK/Per output for further processing

Issue

I have some text file data that I am parsing with SED, AWK and Perl.

product {
    name { thing1 }
    customers {        
        mary { }
        freddy { }
        bob {
            spouse betty
        }
    }
}

From the "customers" section, I am trying to get output similar to:

mary{ }
freddy{ }
bob{spouse betty}

Using: sed -n -e "/customers {/,/}/{/customers {/d;/}/d;p;}" $file'

This is the output:

mary { }
freddy { }
bob {
    spouse betty
}

How can I concatenate the "bob" customer to one line and remove the extra spaces? The main reason for this specific output is that I am writing a script to grab the "customer" fields and other fields in the text file, then outputting them to a csv file. Which will look something like this. I know this would probably be easier in another language, but bash is what I know.

output.csv
product,customers,another_column
thing1,mary{ } freddy{ } bob{spouse betty},something_else

Solution

The data happens to have valid tcl list syntax:

set f [open "input.file"]
set data [dict create {*}[read $f]]
close $f

set name [string trim [dict get $data product name]]
dict for {key val} [dict get $data product customers] {
    lappend customers [format "%s{%s}" $key [string trim $val]]
}

set f [open "output.csv" w]
puts $f "product,customers,another_column"
puts $f [join [list $name [join $customers] "something_else"] ,]
close $f

creates output.csv with

product,customers,another_column
thing1,mary{} freddy{} bob{spouse betty},something_else

Answered By - glenn jackman

Answer Checked By - David Goodson (WPSolving Volunteer)