Shell Programming and Scripting

This is my Awk command.

Code:

direct_count=`awk -F; 'BEGIN { direct_count=0 } $16 !~ /(PBLON|PBNY)/ || $18 !~ /(PBLON|PBNY)/ { direct_count++ } END { print direct_count }' ls.txt`

I get a syntax error.

Code:

BEGIN { direct_count=0 } $16 !~ /(PBLON|PBNY)/ || $18 !~ /(PBLON|PBNY)/ { direct_count++ } END { print direct_count }:  not found
expr: syntax error

I'm trying to say "if the 16th field or 18th field does not contain "PBLON" or "PBNY" then increment the counter. Also, the file I'm reading from has semi-colin ";" delimiters which I specified in the -F; flag.

Also, I don't think this matters but, the csv file I'm reading from has one header line which simply contains the field names separated by semi-colins which shouldn't have caused the error.

I think I fixed it.

The problem was, the semi-colin is a special character in the Unix shell, so I had to simply escape it.

-F\;

woops... the syntax error is fixed but the awk didn't increment the way I thought it would... Will update this post in a little while after I try to figure it out myself first.

Here's the problem..

In my test csv file, there are 195 records, not including the single line header.
My result for that awk gave me a value of "588" so it incremented incorrectly..
The result should be equal to or less than the total number of records.

Let me try to put it into words again and maybe someone could suggest modifications to my pattern search..

"Increment the counter if field 16 AND field 18 do NOT contain the strings "PBLON" or "PBNY".

'BEGIN { direct_count=0 } $16 !~ /(PBLON|PBNY)/ || $18 !~ /(PBLON|PBNY)/ { direct_count++ } END { print direct_count }'

I'm doing something wrong..

see the problem?

btw you don't need to initialize variables in awk - there implicitely initialized to 0 [or empty string]

yes thank you.. my goodness...
i have a spiltting headache today
my physician accidently damaged some of my ear canal tissue

thank you again.

Actually, I initiailze the variables because I don't want to have that empty string. In the past it caused some `expr ...` errors because I was trying to add a number with an empty string.

... or you could: [... END {printf("%d\n", direct_count)}]