Shell Programming and Scripting

Sourcing a file is not the only shell feature that is not supported in awk. If we assume that you have sourced settings for the following variables:

Code:

FIELD1="text1"
FIELD2="text2"

then the awk code:

Code:

  printf("<application name=%s$FIELD1%s>\n\t<field task=%supdate%s name=%s$FIELD2%s>\n", qq, qq,qq,qq,qq,qq)

will print:

Code:

<application name="$FIELD1">\n\t<field task="update" name="$FIELD2">

not:

Code:

<application name="text1">\n\t<field task="update" name="text2">

If the above is the output you want, you would need a printf call more like:

Code:

  printf("<application name=%s%s%s>\n\t<field task=%supdate%s name=%s%s%s>\n",
    qq, FIELD1, qq, qq, qq, qq, FIELD2, qq)

because variables and variables preceded by a $ are not expanded inside double-quoted strings in awk and in awk $var expands to the contents of the field number named by the number assigned to the variable named var; not to the string assigned to the variable named var.