I'm very confused by this thread. Using the above code with OUTPUT set to:

Code:

survey=177,value=85.6701,time=[Sep-1-(14:21:02-1409606462-2014)],epoch=1409606462,avg=7.43836,range=120330--120507,-95.4802  survey=177,value=85.6701,time=[Sep-1-(14:21:02-1409606462-2014)],epoch=1409606462,avg=7.43836,range=120330--120507,-95.4802 survey=177,value=85.6701,time=[Sep-1-(14:21:02-1409606462-2014)],epoch=1409606462,avg=7.43836,range=120330--120507,-95.4802

(which uses echo to change the two spaces before the second occurrence of survey= into a single space) feeds a single line into gawk. Even if $OUTPUT expanded to contain multiple lines, the echo would convert any adjacent sequence of one or more <space>, <tab>, and <newline> characters into single <space> characters in the data passed in to gawk. Therefore, all of the conditions marked in red above will ALWAYS evaluate to false.

And, you said the above script is working correctly, but you want it to run faster by combining the two invocations of gawk into a single invocation of gawk (or awk), but the description of what you want the code:

Code:

if(($4>='"$WARNING"') && ($4<='"$CRITICAL"')) {print $0}

to do, doesn't even come close to what this code does. If WARNING is set to -2 and CRITICAL is set to 2, this code will print the single input line to your script if and only if $4 in your input (85.6701 in your sample input) is between -2 and 2. Since 85.6701 is not between -2 and 2, your script will produce no output for your sample input. Borrowing from Chubler_XL and taking SriniShoo's evaluation to the next step, your code could be optimized to something like:

Code:

WARNING=${1}
CRITICAL=${2}

echo ${OUTPUT} | gawk -F'[=,]' -v CRIT=${CRITICAL} -v WARN=${WARNING} '
$4 >= WARN && $4 <= CRIT {
        if ($2 > 0)
                print $0, -100
        else if ($2 == 0)
                print $0, 0
        else    print
} ' OFS=,

Or, to match your various English descriptions of how $WARNING and $CRITICAL are to be used, change:

Code:

$4 >= WARN && $4 <= CRIT {

to:

Code:

$4 <= WARN {

or, maybe:

Code:

$4 <= WARN || $4 >= CRIT {