In a loop, I want to append some text to a file without generating a new line (and then force a new line before re-iterating the loop). In the code below the first 'echo' command is OK as it uses '--n' for no new line. For the 'awk' line I *thought* I could solve it by using printf rather than print (and not using the normal '\n').

The loop is as below:

do
echo -n $testTimeNow $'\t' >> $HOME/temp/ss.tmp
/usr/sbin/ss -i | awk -f awk_filter.tmp >> $HOME/temp/ss.tmp
# A new line now
echo "" >> $HOME/temp/ss.tmp
done

Note, awk_filter.tmp is ...

/[match]/ {printf "%s %s" \$1, \$2 }


but this isn't working. The 'awk' line in the loop *is* adding a new line in. Any and all suggestions appreciated!