If you haven't tried it, check out the csvkit tools: https://csvkit.readthedocs.org/en/0.9.1/. `csvlook` and `csvcut` are awesome.

I'm also a huge fan of Ruby's `csv` package in the standard library, particularly http://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-1.9.2/libdoc/csv/rdoc/CSV.html#me....

All that only works for properly quoted CSV though... for companies who can't generate quoted csv files pipes or tabs are the unfortunate way to go.