CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxbashubuntuawkgawk
James
James

Reputation: 31

Using awk command in Bash

I'm trying to loop an awk command using bash script and I'm having a hard time including a variable within the single quotes for the awk command. I'm thinking I should be doing this completely in awk, but I feel more comfortable with bash right now. 

#!/bin/bash

index="1"

while [ $index -le 13 ]
do

    awk "'"/^$index/ {print}"'" text.txt

done

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1957

Answers (2)

sjsam
sjsam

Reputation: 21965

awk '/'"$index"'/' text.txt
# A lil play with the script part where you split the awk command
# and sandwich the bash variable in between using double quotes
# Note awk prints by default, so idiomatic awk omits the '{print}' too.

should do, alternatively use grep like

grep "$index" text.txt # Mind the double quotes

Note : -le is used for comparing numerals, so you may change index="1" to index=1.

Upvotes: 0

heemayl
heemayl

Reputation: 42017

Use the standard approach -- -v option of awk to set/pass the variable:

awk -v idx="$index" '$0 ~ "^"idx' text.txt

Here i have set the variable idx as having the value of shell variable $index. Inside awk, i have simply used idx as an awk variable.

$0 ~ "^"idx matches if the record starts with (^) whatever the variable idx contains; if so, print the record.

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions