I almost reach my objective (Youhouuu !!!!)
But I really don't understand why it doesn't work until the end...

For clarity's sake I am taking a very simple example. The operations I am doing in the script (gsub and print) really don't have any importance !!! I just matter about redirecting the file that I produced inside the script.


input file called "original.txt":

Code:

book # 001|line 1|America
book # 002|line 56|Asia
book # 003|line 38|Europe

I remove the expression "line " in $2 and would like to redirect the output file called "for_later.txt" because I will need to have a trace of the data I produced at this stage and I will use them later for something else (something even totally different from programming).

But for now, I need to keep processing the original input file "original.txt" by adding another field ("Price"), like if I've never redirected anything.

Here what I tried:

Code:

BEGIN{FS=OFS="|"}

{ 
    sub("line ","",$2)
    print $0 > "for_later.txt"   # at this stage of the script I redirect the output that I will need later
}

{
    while((getline < "for_later.txt") > 0)   # here I redirect the produced file to keep processing it
    print $0 FS "Price:   $"
}

Problem:
The file "for_later.txt" looks perfectly fine:

Code:

book # 001|1|America
book # 002|56|Asia
book # 003|38|Europe

However my final output produced when awk finish executing the entire script only display the first line (the content of this line is correct though):

Code:

book # 001|1|America|Price:   $

Question: Why the 2 other lines are missing ???
the final output I would like for now:

Code:

book # 001|1|America|Price:   $
book # 002|56|Asia|Price:   $
book # 003|38|Europe|Price:   $

* I also tried every kind of getline:
getline
getline var
getline < file
getline var < file
command | getline (with the shell command "cat for_later.txt")
command | getline
command |& getline
command |& getline var

* I tried to close the file before calling getline.

* I tried "if" instead of "while", and even with no statements.

It always return the first line only !

Please, if someone could explain what is happening it would be great.
Thanks !