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windowsbatch-fileawkprintfquotes
LincolnLogger
LincolnLogger

Reputation: 23

Escaping nested double quotes in awk

In a Windows Server environment, having trouble with escaping quotes that are within quotes. Using the functioning batch code below as a base: 

awk -F "|" "$4 ~ /JUVENILE/ {sum +=$6} END {printf sum}" sourcedata.file

Problems occur when trying to include "%.3f" to printf. I am confused and unable to properly escape these quotes in my environment.

awk -F "|" "$4 ~ /JUVENILE/ {sum +=$6} END {printf """%.3f""", sum}" sourcedata.file

The above will work at the command prompt, but will not work in a simple batch file. I have also attempted to replace "%.3f" with \"%.3f\" and \""%.3f\"" and these also do not work in a batch file.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 607

Answers (1)

Ed Morton
Ed Morton

Reputation: 204310

The standard advice for Windows to avoid their nightmarish quoting rules is:

a) Don't call the script from Windows. Install cygwin or similar to get a UNIX-like environment and then call the script from that, or...

b) Don't specify the script text on the command line in Windows, save it in a file instead, i.e. put this in a file named foo.awk:

BEGIN { FS="|" }
$4 ~ /JUVENILE/ {sum +=$6}
END {printf "%.3f", sum}

and then execute it as awk -f foo.awk sourcedata.file

Upvotes: 1

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