need help removing time from a csv file

Question

im trying to process a csv and make it easier for sorting, and i need to remove the time and the dash from it. the file has entries like this:

James,07/20/2009-14:40:11
Steve,08/06/2006-02:34:37
John,11/03/2008-12:12:34

and parse it into this:

James,07/20/2009
Steve,08/06/2006
John,11/03/2008

im guessing sed is the right tool for this job?

thanks for your help.

Answer 1

cut -d '-' -f 1 < /path/to/your/file

Edit after comment: sed 's/-[0-9][0-9]:[0-9][0-9]:[0-9][0-9]//g' < /path/to/your/file

Answer 2

Python

import csv
import datetime

rdr = csv.reader( open("someFile.csv", "rb" ) )
rows = list( reader )
rdr.close()

def byDateTime( aRow ):
    return return datetime.datetime.strptime( aRow[1], "%m/%d/%Y-%H:%M:%S" )

rows.sort( key= byDateTime )

wtr = csv.writer( open("sortedFile.csv", "wb" ) )
wtr.writerows( rows )
wtr.close()

Answer 3

just use awk

awk -F"," '{ split($2,_,"-"); print $1,_[1] }' OFS="," file

Answer 4

Yes, I think sed is the right tool for the job:

sed 's/-[:0-9]*$//' file