title: Perform character replacement/removal on only one column of a delimited file?
body: <p>I have a csv file which has two columns, a numeric ID (<code>IDVAR</code>) and an associated value (<code>VAL</code>). The second variable contains non-alphabetic garbage characters which need cleaning up. The structure looks like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>IDVAR   VAL
  001     abc - 1
  002     zfas $^6
  003     asdf_78
  004     hg :65
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I want to throw out the <code>"-", "_", "1", "$", "^"</code> etc. from the 2nd variable only, i.e. remove a specified set of characters from <code>VAL</code>, without touching <code>IDVAR</code>.</p>
  
  <p>Post-Solution Edit: Many thanks to SiegeX for such an elegant solution. Please note that my file is indeed comma-separated, so I just have to add an "-F," option to his awk command.</p>