Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi

%% is used for escaping the special character %, so %%s wouldn't expect any command ant it will print the % character.

Code:

sprintf("date -d %s +%%s",d1) 

will print

date -d <value for d1> +%s

which is the command I need for converting the date in format
mm/dd/yyyy in a number (number of seconds) to be able for performing
comparations between dates (which date goes after the oter....)

For example, you can try this code

Code:

awk -v d1=03/20/2009 '
BEGIN { msg=sprintf("date -d %s +%%s",d1);
        print msg;
        system(msg);
      }'

The output will be

Code:

date -d 03/20/2009 +%s
1237503600

So, as it is expected, the probhlem is that I can't capture the value 1237503600 in awk for performing my calculations.

Thanks

Isi

Here is an example. All code goes into your awk script ...

1. The value of the current line's $1 will be inserted into the cmd variable.
2. The string in the cmd variable will be executed in the unix shell by awk's getline, and the command's output will be saved in var (a newly created awk variable).
3. Awk will have access to the command's output via the var variable.

Code:

   cmd="echo "$1" | tr [:upper:] [:lower:]"	
   cmd | getline var
   close(cmd)
   print var

¡¡ THANKS A LOT!! :-)

It works fine, I didn't know I could execute directly the UNIX commando without system.

Thanks again for all yout help!!!

Isi