I'm not sure what you mean by or by .

If you save the code I provided in a file named compare_time,
change /bin/ksh in #!/bin/ksh to be the absolute pathname of ksh on your system, run the command:

Code:

chmod +x compare_time

and then run the command:

Code:

./compare_time

it should work exactly like it works if you paste the script into an interactive Korn shell.

If you mean that you want to put the script into a file that can be used with awk's -f option, then create a file named compare_time.awk containing the following:

Code:

BEGIN { FS = "  "
}
{
        if(split($1, nf, /[:.]/) != 4) {
                printf "Time stamp split for \"%s\" on line %d failed\n", $1, NR
                exit 1
        }
        if(NR > 1) {
                usec = nf[4] - lf[4]
                sec = nf[3] - lf[3]
                min = nf[2] - lf[2]
                hr = nf[1] - lf[1]
                if(usec < 0) {usec += 1000000; sec--}
                if(sec < 0) {sec += 60; min--}
                if(min < 0) {min += 60; hr--}
                if(hr < 0) hr += 24
                printf "%2d:%02d:%02d.%06d\n", hr, min, sec, usec
        }
        for(i = 1; i <= 4; i++) lf[i] = nf[i]
        printf "%20s: ", $2
}
END {   printf "unknown (no end time stamp)\n"
}

and then use it as follows:

Code:

awk -f compare_time.awk input_filename

If these suggestions don't take care of the issue, please provide the exact message or messages being written by awk that tell you that awk is throwing an input file read error, and provide the exact command line that you're using to invoke awk. (As mentioned in an earlier message, if you're running this on a Solaris system, use /usr/xpg4/bin/awk or nawk instead of awk.)