CODEWITHSUNDEEP
unixawkksh
Philip Morris
Philip Morris

Reputation: 469

How do you pass a parameter on awk command?

I tried this but it does not seem to work. Please help thanks

 TEST_STRING= test

    echo Starting awk command
    awk -v testString=$TEST_STRING'
        BEGIN {

        }
    {
        print testString
        }
        END {}
    ' file2

Upvotes: 0

Views: 116

Answers (1)

Charles Duffy
Charles Duffy

Reputation: 295687

There are two problems here: You aren't actually assigning to TEST_STRING, and you're passing the program code in the same argument as the variable value. Both of these are caused by whitespace and quoting being in the wrong places.

TEST_STRING= test

...does not assign a value to TEST_STRING. Instead, it runs the command test, with an environment variable named TEST_STRING set to an empty value.

Perhaps instead you want

TEST_STRING=test

or

TEST_STRING=' test'

...if the whitespace is intentional.

Second, passing a variable to awk with -v, the right-hand side should be double-quoted, and there must be unquoted whitespace between that value and the program to be passed to awk (or other values). That is to say:

awk -v testString=$TEST_STRING' BEGIN

...will, if TEST_STRING contains no whitespace, pass the BEGIN as part of the value of testString, not as a separate argument!

awk -v testString="$TEST_STRING" 'BEGIN

...on, the other hand, ensures that the value of TEST_STRING is passed as part of the same argument as testString=, even if it contains whitespace -- and ensures that the BEGIN is passed as part of a separate argument.

Upvotes: 2

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