UNIX for Beginners Questions & Answers

I have a list of countries and I'm trying to print the country names that start with "A" and end in "a".

I can do the first one which gives me the correct output.

Code:

awk '/^A/ {print $1}' countries.txt

but when I try:

Code:

awk '/^A a$/ {print $1}' countries.txt

or even:

Code:

awk '/a$/ {print $1}' countries.txt

It doesn't work or give me any output at all.

Using awk and only awk how can I print countries that start with A and end in a? What is incorrect about my statement?

Textfile I am using is rather large so you can find it here: countries.txt - Pastebin.com

a$ would search for lines that end in a, if you want to test the first field you need to give a more specific expression.

Code:

awk '($1 ~ /^A/ ) && ($1 ~ /a$/) { print $1 }' input.txt

Or even:

Code:

awk '$1 ~ /^A.*a$/ { print $1 }' input.txt

Oh okay I see, thank you!