Shell Programming and Scripting

I have an awk script script.awk for example and want to pass a flag (let's call it "neat") so that the data is put into nice columns. For example like this

awk -v neat -f script.awk fin > fout

Then check inside the program if the use has put neat, if yes I output the lines in nice columns, else I just leave a one blank.

How does one usually do such things??

Something like this,

Input File

Code:

# cat fin
cool
dirty
nice
bad
worst
nice

AWK script

Code:

# cat script_awk.awk
#!/bin/awk -f

{
gsub("nice",v1)
print
}

Invocation

Code:

# awk -v v1="neat" -f script_awk.awk fin
cool
dirty
neat
bad
worst
neat