Oh its not my day for syntax...

I have read a lot about the awk -v but haven't been able to get it to work. I have a variable in my script and I'm looking just to push it into the awk after the $2 (or anywhere would do)!!!

Every example of this has led me down a merry road and I'm wondering if anyone can actually explain this finer point to me?

let's say there is a previous

var=filecontent

I have found that the server I'm operating on has some anomolies in its implementation of UNIX so if I could possibly ask a favour of someone out there with awk skills...

would it be possible to write a small piece of example code 'which works' where a similar variable is imported and used in an awk function?

i ask this because I have every feeling that once again this code will work on every other unix installation and not the one we have here... if so I need to sort it out with the sys admin asap

but without some real working code as an example I won't have a chance of explaining.

So could anyone possibly run a working example past me?

possibly

var=varname

echo 10 12 | awk 'BEGIN {VAR=var}{print "something",$1,$2,$VAR}'

or something similar?

I think you want this:


Output:
hello myname

your code shoule be

echo 10 12 | awk -v VAR=${var} '{print "something",$1,$2,VAR}'

Output:
something 10 12 hello

thanks vish, its as I feared then and once again I find I've wasted a day because our beloved server is set up wrong...

my output from your code is

var=”hello”: command not found
var=”myname”: command not found
var2: undefined variable

and the output from your improvement on my line is

var: undefined variable

So I've sat here another full day trying to get things to work because our sys admin has rocks in his head... very sad and frustrating indeed.

thanks a million for that snippet of code, without which I couldn't properly explain the anomoly to the tech support and sys admins - so greatly appreciated.

i think i need to go to bed now.

what shell are you using? Most of the examples you got used /usr/bin/sh or /usr/bin/bash or /usr/bin/ksh.
Please show output from:

these are csh/tcsh responses

I've had my brother in law look at this - its based around a university assignment... there are some basic stuff being fooled with like not being able to set variables

var="troy"

but i can put them in a text file and make them variables with a cat into the variable

anyway we've experimented and it appears the shell has been limited for some reason... in ksh

var="troy"

has no problem

so sorry for the bother everyone - this one seems to be something I need to take back to the lecturers. I've found ways to get around the limitations of what's going on but the time factor is killing me from the business end... had to knock back a good contract yesterday.

thanks for the help, it was crucial to my understanding and invaluable to my being able to successfully get past the hurdles.

no doubt i will have more questions on the weekend