Shell Programming and Scripting

Edit:
I was wrong again. I really need a rest. Sorry one more.

No Problem at all...

Please rest now I will be back in the office on monday

Thanks anyway!

Yes, this does not work:

Code:

cat INPUTFILE
a
d
c

awk '{ print | "sort" } END { print "END" }' INPUTFILE
END
a
c
d

But this does (at least for gawk):

Code:

awk '{ print | "sort" } END { close("sort"); print "END" }' INPUTFILE
a
c
d
END

You need to use exactly the same string for close, as for a pipe - "sort -k4" in your case.

So how should I put this in my script? Does it also works with printf?

Put this as the first statement after the second "END":

Code:

END { 
  close "sort -k4"
  ...
}

It doesn't matter what you use after - print or printf.
I've tested it with gawk, but this feature is not GNU extension so it should work.

Hmm the sort function still doesn't work how I like to see it.. But maybe it is just impossible in the current code.. Will work on it. I think I have enough info.

A different question:
On the split command, it seems that spaces are not accounted for.
For some of the fields seperated by the / the outcome should be something like: "my department". But instead I get only "my". I have done some search on this and in all occasions I see that spaces are allowed and stored/printed.. So what am I doing wrong here ?

regards

Maybe. You really need refactoring.

On split. It should work as you want. But with spaces in the names of files you can not expect than your filename would be always in $9 in awk. For example with one space the first part before the space will be in $9 and the second - in $10.