Write bash script which takes input from pipe

Question

I am always typing things like this:

cat some_list_of_elements.txt | awk '{print "\047"$1"\047"}' | paste -d, -s

It takes a list of items from a file, wraps each in quotes, and merges them together in a comma-separated list.

Rather than typing out all that stuff, I'd like to do something like this:

cat some_list_of_elements.txt | csl

How can csl be implemented in bash? Is there a way to do it as an alias?

Answer 1

alias csl="awk '{print "\047"$1"\047"}' | paste -d, -s"

then just cat whatever | csl

This seems to work, but really doesn't, for the reasons mentioned in the comments below. See them for actual, good working solutions :)

By the way, this is not ubuntu-specific, so feel free to post on stackoverflow.com if my answer doesn't work for you.

Answer 2

This worked for me:

alias csl='awk '\''{print "\047"$1"\047"}'\'' | paste -d, -s'

Thanks to @roadmr for pointing me in the right direction.