Hi all,

I'm new to awk and I'm experiencing syntax error that I don't know how to resolve. Hopefully some experts in this forum can help me out.

I created an awk file that look like this:

$ cat myawk.awk
BEGIN {
VAR1=PATTERN1
VAR2=PATTERN2
}

/VAR1/ { flag=1 }
/VAR2/ { flag=0 }
{ if (flag == 1) { print $0 } }

The purpose of this awk file is to accept 2 patterns from the command line and extract sections that is between these 2 patterns. And I'm using this file to search for sections that in between [W] and [I], also [E] and [I]. Therefore, in command line, I set

PATTERN1="^\[.\]" and PATTERN2="^\[I\]" :

$ gawk -v PATTERN1="^\[.\]" -v PATTERN2="^\[W\]" -f myawk.awk < myfile.txt

and I'm not getting any output. However, if I change the awk file to the following:


$ cat myawk_no_input.awk
BEGIN {
^\[.\]=PATTERN1
^\[I\]=PATTERN2
}

/^\[.\]/ { flag=1 }
/^\[I\]/ { flag=0 }
{ if (flag == 1) { print $0 } }

I'll get what I needed. Can anyone please explain to me what have I done wrong in the first version of myawk.awk?

Thanks!