CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashvariablesawkpattern-matching
NewEffect
NewEffect

Reputation: 93

Awk pattern search with variables

Ok so i can get a variable to pass into awk but when there is a space in variable it will not search anything so here is some code

 new="bob"
 searc=`awk '/#'$new':/,/---/ {print $0}'` file.txt
 echo "$searc"

should display something like this

  #bob:
   happy
   fun
   love
   sun
  ------

so the first example ^ works perfectly however Luke Jackson is never found now the reason for the name being stored in a variable is because it suppose to be dynamic so it can change. Now am i missing something simple here or i just cant do it this way?

 new="Luke Jackson"
 searc=`awk '/#'$new':/,/---/ {print $0}'` file.txt
 echo "$searc"

  #Luke Jackson:
   sad
   fun
   evil
   moon
  ------

Upvotes: 1

Views: 191

Answers (2)

anubhava
anubhava

Reputation: 786289

Simple sed can also solve this:

new='Luke Jackson'
sed -n "/#$new:/,/---/p" file

#Luke Jackson:
sad
fun
evil
moon
------

Upvotes: 0

karakfa
karakfa

Reputation: 67567

if you rewrite your script slightly there won't be any issues

$ awk -v name='Luke Jackson' '$0~"#"name":"{f=1} f && /----/{f=0} f' file

  #Luke Jackson:
   sad
   fun
   evil
   moon

note also that perhaps instead of pattern matching you need exact match, in that case use ==

Upvotes: 2

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