That is because these are but three lines of a 70 line AWK script. Isn't it enough to say code is AWK code or BASH code or Korn code? indeed there is. I am passing filenames from the Bash wrapper to the AWK script this way. I disagree. Those 3 lines are what I am doing (they work just fine). I am just looking for a more elegant solution You showed me several things including the solution I used in my very first post in this thread.

Code:

argument=$1; sub ( "^$", "default if empty", argument) (AWK)

That's becaue the sample script you showed me works just fine as do the scripts and portions of scripts I posted. My question was "Does awk have parameter substitution (or something with the same functionality)?" I'm trying my best to explain what I mean by that. I gave a BASH example of parameter substitution and I gave example of AWK code that performs the same function but using more commands.

Let me try again: In BASH you can equate one BASH variable to another BASH variable with a default in a single command.

Code:

a=${b:-"default"}

Is there a similar command in AWK (equate one AWK variable to another AWK variable with a default value in a single command)?

Mike