When i use the code:

echo "Please enter your full name:"
read name
echo $name | awk '{print"Hello Mr." $2}'

And enter a first middle and surname e.g. john bloggs smith then it outputs 'Hello Mr. bloggs' instead of 'Hello Mr. smith'.

And if i use the code:

echo $name | awk '{print"Hello Mr." $0}'

And enter a first middle and surname e.g. john bloggs smith then it outputs 'Hello Mr. john bloggs smiths' instead of 'Hello Mr. smith'.

AHHH lol. Thanks very much for all your help

To print last name, try:

echo "Please enter your full name:"
read name
echo $name | awk '{print"Hello Mr. " $NF}'

Thanks PMM that worked great!

I'm trying to improve this now, so that it doesn't greet everyone as "Mr." So I've made a variable called "title" (referring to Mr. Mrs. etc) my ONLY problem now is that i don't know how to order the command. This is what i have atm:

echo $name | awk '{print"Hello $title " $NF}'

I've tried putting the $title bit in different places, but no luck....

Thanks for all your help everyone.

Phil

Hello kazazza

AWK need a mapping in order to read normal shell variables, you'd rather need to re-form your command as below to get the desired result:

title="Mr"
echo "Please Enter your name: "
read name
echo $name | awk -v awk_title=$title '{print "hello " awk_title ". " $NF}'

or you can assign the title variable from within AWK
echo "Please Enter your name: "
read name
echo $name | awk BEGIN '{title="Mr"} {print "Hello " title ". " $NF}'

Thanks very much TheEngineer that worked perfectly.

And i thank all you that have helped me

Have a good New Year!

Try this:

echo "Please enter your full name: "
read name
echo $name | awk '{print $2}'

SINCE I CANNOT RECALL THE ABOVE MSG, PLS IGNORE IT.

echo "Please enter your full name:"
read first last
echo $last

as long as the user input has a space between John & Doe then
$first=John
$last=Doe