Changing every other comma to point

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi

I am working with set of data which is written in Swedish format. comma is used instead of point for decimal numbers in Sweden.

My data set is like this:

1,188,1,250,0,757,0,946,8,960
1,257,1,300,0,802,1,002,9,485
1,328,1,350,0,846,1,058,10,021
1,381,1,400,0,880,1,100,10,418

Which I want to change every other comma to point and have output like this:

1.188,1.250,0.757,0.946,8.960
1.257,1.300,0.802,1.002,9.485
1.328,1.350,0.846,1.058,10.021
1.381,1.400,0.880,1.100,10.418

Any idea of how to do that with simple shell scripting. It is fine If I do it in multiple steps. I mean if I change first the first instance of comma and then the third instance and ...

Thank you very much for your help.

2

Hello Johanni,

Please use code tags as per forum rules for your codes/Inputs/commands into your posts.
Could you please try following and let me know if this helps.

awk '{num=split($0,A,",");for(i=1;i<=num;i++){Q=i%2==0?".":",";VAL=VAL?VAL Q A:A};print VAL;VAL=""}'   Input_file

Output will be as follows.

1.188,1.250,0.757,0.946,8.960
1.257,1.300,0.802,1.002,9.485
1.328,1.350,0.846,1.058,10.021
1.381,1.400,0.880,1.100,10.418

Thanks,
R. Singh

3

It worked great, the only problem is it would removes zero if it is in the begining of the line. example of you script performance:

input:

0,003,0,200,0,000,0,000,0,020

Output:

003,0.200,0.000,0.000,0.020
4

Try

sed 's/$/,/; s/\([^,]*\),\([^,]*,\)/\1.\2/g; s/,$//' file
1.188,1.250,0.757,0.946,8.960
1.257,1.300,0.802,1.002,9.485
1.328,1.350,0.846,1.058,10.021
1.381,1.400,0.880,1.100,10.418
0.003,0.200,0.000,0.000,0.020
5

Work 100% correct.
Thanks

6 
awk '{for (i=1; i<NF; i+=2) l=l $i "." $(i+1) FS; $0=l; NF=NF-1; l=""} 1' FS=, OFS=, infile