A new convenience utility ros-from-csv is now available in snark. It reads CSV records and converts them into ROS messages with the usual conveniences of csv streams (customised fields, binary format, stream buffering/flushing, etc).
Disclaimer: ros-from-csv is a python application and therefore may not perform well streams that require high bandwidth or low latency.
You could try it out, using the ROS tutorial Understanding Topics (http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Tutorials/UnderstandingTopics):
Run ROS Tutorial nodes:
> # in a new shell > roscore > # in a new shell > rosrun turtlesim turtle_teleop_key
Send your own messages on the topic, using ros-from-csv:
> echo 1,2,3,4,5,6 | ros-from-csv /turtle1/cmd_vel
Or do a dry run:
> echo 1,2,3,4,5,6 | ros-from-csv /turtle1/cmd_vel --dry linear: x: 1.0 y: 2.0 z: 3.0 angular: x: 4.0 y: 5.0 z: 6.0
You also can explicitly specify message type:
> # dry run > echo 1,2,3 | ros-from-csv --type geometry_msgs.msg.Point --dry x: 1.0 y: 2.0 z: 3.0 > # send to a topic > echo 1,2,3 | ros-from-csv --type geometry_msgs.msg.Point some-topic