I'm trying to redirect awk's output to a BASH variable. Currently the statement looks like this

options=`awk '{ while (i < NF) { print $i; ++i } }' answer

but for some reason that makes $options look like this:

1 2 3 4
1
2
3

Now, the input file 'answer' is taken from a dialog checklist. So if I choose option 1, 2, 3, and 4, they are printed to $options twice, but in horizontal, then vertical order. And 4 is gone! Try to explain that.

i is taking on the values 0 1 2 3
So you print $0 which is the whole record and you never print $4

I see. The problem is, I need all the values strung together, unspaced. So if the file has 1 2 3 4, I need it to be 1234 in the bash variable. So far I haven't found a way to get awk to print them unspaced.

!@#$, I finally figured it out. A while loop prints it all funny like that, but a for loop lets me print it unpaced, on one line:

awk '{ for(i=1;i<NF+1;i++) printf $i }' answer