Preserving text formatting when piping output to csv file

Question

I have an executable which gives an output like the following,

Posture state: 3         Posture side: 0   
Posture state: 3         Posture side: 0  
Posture state: 3         Posture side: 0  
Posture state: 3         Posture side: 0  
Posture state: 3         Posture side: 2  
Posture state: 3         Posture side: 2  
Posture state: 3         Posture side: 2  
Posture state: 3         Posture side: 2  
Posture state: 3         Posture side: 2  
Posture state: 3         Posture side: 2  

I tried to pipe the output to a csv file as follows, but the formatting is not preserved. More specifically - the space between Posture state and Posture side is not applied.

./posture.exe > posture_result_acc5.csv

I want the Posture state to go to one column of the csv file and posture side to the next column. How can this be done?

Answer 1

Paste this into a file and save it as posture.py

for line in open('temp.txt','r'):
    a,b,c=line.split(':')
    state=b.replace('Posture side','').replace(' ','')
    side=c.rstrip().replace(' ','')
    print('%s,%s' %(state,side))

And then

./posture.exe > temp.txt
python posture.py > posture_result_acc5.csv

How it works.

The output from your posture.exe is written to a temporary file.

The Python script reads the temp file one line at a time.

Each line is split into three chunks by splitting on the colons.

The 'state' value is the middle chunk with the spaces and 'Posture side' removed.

The 'side' value is the third chunk with the spaces and newline character removed.

These are printed as a comma seperated pair.

The output is redirected into the csv file.

If you want the words as well as the value, then change the last line of the Python script to

print('Posture state: %s,Posture side: %s' %(state,side))