Shell Programming and Scripting

Well this is what im doing, im writing a script that you pass 3 variables into. Filename, delimiter or "FS in AWK", and a string of columbs you want to keep 1,2,4,5... Just modifing a data file and rewriting with a different extension.

My problem atm is using awk to seperate the "columb String"
**Input runme.sh filename.txt "|" 1,2,4,5**

echo $3 | awk -F"," ' {for (i=1;i <=NF;i++) print $i }' |**well i want this redirected into an array..
**Output from this command gives me 1 2 4 5

I need to rebuild this into another awk command."like this"
to get my needed data
needs to be
awk -F"$dell" -v dell=$dell 'BEGIN{OFS= dell }{print $2,$4,""} <--dynamic
END{Print"for Kicks"}' $filename > newoutputfile.txt
**********************************************
OK found a solution myself this is in KSH

echo $time | awk -F"," '{ORS=" " }{OFS=""}{for(i=1;i <=NF;i++) print "$",$i }' | read ouput

set -A array $output

echo ${array[0]}
echo ${array[1]}
echo ${array[3]}

something to start with - not tested:

Code:

#!/bin/ksh

filename='myFile'
newEXT='.new'
columns2keep='1 2 4 5'
del=','

nawk -F"${del}" -v cols="${columns2keep}" '
   BEGIN {
      OFS=FS
      n=split(cols, colsA, " ")
   }
   {
       for(i=1; i <= n; i++)
           printf("%s%s", $colsA[i], (i<n) ? OFS : "\n")
    }
' "${filename}" > "${filename}${newEXT}"

Thanks Vgersh99 that looks close to what i need, though i cant use nawk and i dont think i can manipulate the output string the same way in awk. I ended up using a different method, crude but it worked.

filename=$1
dell=$2
keep=$3

echo $keep | awk -F"," '{ORS=" " }{OFS=""}{gtw=","} {for(i=1;i <=NF;i++){ print "$",$i,gtw; if((i+1) == NF) gtw="" } }' | read output

i="awk -F\"$dell\" 'BEGIN{OFS=FS}{print $output}' $filename"

echo $i > temp.sh
chmod 700 temp.sh
temp.sh