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In Tshark, which character to use as field-separator to separate SMS text from a bunch of data, as any character can be used within the SMS text?

asked 2018-08-31 14:46:27 +0000

Jason gravatar image

I have a pcap file which has a bunch of data, and one of those data fields is SMS-text. It is dummy data ofcourse.

I am using Tshark and giving it a -E separator=CHARACTER, on the basis of which it separates fields into a CSV file. It uses a comma character as the default field separator.

Now the problem is that whenever a comma character occurs in SMS text, it separates the rest of the SMS text and makes it a separate field. If I add -E quote=d to the command, it separates at the occurence of " within SMS text and considers the rest of the SMS text as a separate field. This is a problem.

So my question is that how do I find a single character which I can use as a field separater in this case?

At the moment, my tshark command looks like this:

tshark -r inputFile.pcap  -T fields  -e field1  -e field2  -e smsTextField  -E quote=d  -E separator=,  >output.csv
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answered 2018-08-31 15:58:29 +0000

cmaynard gravatar image

According to the tshark man page, the tab character should be the default separator; have you tried it either implicitly or explicitly, i.e. -E separator=/t? Ultimately, it may just take some trial-and-error to find a character that's not present in the text. To quote the man page: "Otherwise any character that can be accepted by the command line as part of the option may be used."

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Asked: 2018-08-31 14:46:27 +0000

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Last updated: Aug 31 '18