Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi,

I am having trouble using the result of the following awk command in a script, as displaying the contents of the placeholder automatically replaces the new created TAB by a space character again:

From the prompt:

Code:

cscyabl@comet:(develop)> echo "01 12" | awk '{gsub(" ","\t");print}'
01      12

From a script:

Code:

A=`echo "01 12" | awk '{gsub(" ","\t");print}'` 
echo $A 
print $A 
printf $A"\n" 

cscyabl@comet:(develop)> ./test
01 12
01 12
01

Is there any way to remediate to this problem? I don't know if the problem is the redirection to a placeholder ($A) or the print commands...

Any help would be much appreciated, cheers.

Code:

A=`echo "01 12" | awk '{gsub(" ","\t");print}'`
echo "$A"
print "$A"
printf "$A""\n"

The quotes will tell the shell to pass the arguments as they are. Otherwise, the string gets split on the contents of $IFS (which includes \t) and echo glues them together again with the contents of $OFS (which is just ' ').

Thanks for the insight