Convert CSV to TSV, properly handling intra-field commas, newlines and quoted double-quotes, as per rfc4180 section 2. Also convert TSV separators to C-style escapes.

csv2tsv.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
#
# Convert CSV to TSV, properly handling intra-field commas, newlines and
# quoted double-quotes, as per rfc4180 section 2. Also convert TSV separators
# to C-style escapes.
#
 
from __future__ import print_function
import sys, csv
 
with sys.stdin as f:
    reader = csv.reader(f, strict=True)
    for row in reader:
        for col in row:
            # Replace TSV delimiters with C-style escapes.
            col = col.replace('\n', '\\n')
            col = col.replace('\t', '\\t')
            print(col, end='\t')
        print()