Shell Programming and Scripting

in AWK, how can I change the RS (record separator) in the middle of awk command.

for example:

gawk 'NR==FNR { key[$1]++;next }; RS="?"; $1 in key' file1 file2

in above, I put RS="?" in the middle to change the value of RS to "?" right after the file1 has been processed. when it begins to process file2, It should use the new RS to break the file. But it seems not to work that way as I expect.

how can I achieve that?

i think you should do it on two steps

but dont count on me didnt use awk for awhile in advanced scripting

Try something like that (not tested) :

Code:

gawk 'NR==FNR { key[$1]++;next } $1 in key' file1 RS="?" file2

Jean-Pierre.