Please explain in English what you think the expression in the if statement in:

Code:

awk '{if($input == $(ls)) {print $1 "\t" $2;} }

is doing. Since you can't get the else clause to work, by definition, your code is not working. How can you say your code is working when it won't run if the filename you pass to it is not a file that exists in the current directory? Furthermore, it is my belief that what the code above is doing is not doing what you think it is. Whether or not that means it is working when the named file does exist is open for discussion. I claim that if it is not doing what you think it is doing, it is not working. You claim that since the then clause of your if statement is working, everything is fine.

Without running the following code, what output do you think it would produce:

Code:

awk '{if($input == $(ls)) {print $1 "\t" $2 "\t$input=\"" $input "\"\t$(ls)=\"" $(ls) "\"";} } $input

After you have decided what output you think it should produce, run it and compare the output you get to the output you thought it should produce. Then go back and look at how I said that expression in the if statement would be evaluated in my comments in post #4 in this thread.

Please run the above test and let us know what happens!

As I said before, I can't test your code using the version of awk that I have available on my system because the code you're using is not technically correct (and produces a syntax error in the version of awk that I'm using, but runs without producing a syntax error in the version of awk that you're using). I can force the version of awk I'm using to get the results you're seeing by changing your code to:

Code:

awk '{if($input == $(ls+0)) {print $1 "\t" $2;} }