I'm now considering doing it in the way you suggested, but I have another question about your suggested method.

My problem: Originally I ran something like ls -al | grep Jun 22 | cut -c49-100 >> myLs.txt to give me just the time and filename of all files for June 22nd in a text file.

With that text file I began awking.

You're suggesting that instead of using while read hour file that I begin the awk right away, to avoid repeating all that code that I did.

Since the text file with the LS holds the filenames of CSV files, I need to be able to, at some point, awk those files to perform some count calculations. I don't think I could use a nested awk.. awk within an awk to open those files found in the first awk. (or could I?).

I'll pick up the book over the weekend, thanks.