A quick perl script to solve that same problem

#!/usr/bin/perl


## check for existence of a file ##
if (-e "./test2.txt") {
print "File exists! \n";
}else {
print "File does not exist";
}


print "\n ";

#use strict;
open(MYDATA, "test2.txt") or
die("Error: cannot open file 'data.txt'\n");
my $line;
my $lnum = 1;

while( $line = ){
chomp($line);
# chop;
($fee, $fi, $fo, $fum) = (split(/,/, $line));
print "COLUMN 2 is: $fi \n ";
if ( $fi =~ /^\./ ) {
print "found one \n";
}
print "$lnum| $line\n";
$lnum++;
}


close MYDATA;