UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

perhaps our own limited assistance stems from your including only a snippet of the overall use. Looks like it is an eval of contents grepped out of an input file, which might be of use in explaining things...

In any case, note the following application of the %s modifier:

Code:

printf "%s\n"     hello 
printf "%3.3sp\n" hello 
printf "%3.2s\n"  hello hello hello

Ok, maybe my initial question was a little confusing so let me try to explain again:

I have this code:

Code:

{ name = $1 }
{ delchi = $2 }

{printf("grep %s junk.all.dat | awk '$4<=%s{print $1, $2, $3, $4, $5}' | wc -l >> fitnumb.dat\n", name, delchi)}

so the first %s will give the "name" which is defined as $1, that makes sense.
Now my problem is with the second %s... Looking at the code it seems that it will give delchi... which is $2... my question is where is this $2 ? It is not in the original junk.all.dat... I know that the output of grep %s junk.all.dat is taken for the next part which is the awk command, but where does it get delchi from...
Does the question make more sense now?

This is very confusing.

The first arg is name and the second arg is delchi. You grep for name from junk.all.dat. The output is piped into awk where you compare the fourth field to "delchi" If the fourth field is less than or equal to delchi, you print the first five fields which is piped into word count where only the number of lines is output.

Did I get that right?

But this code works... I just don't understand it

---------- Post updated at 03:37 PM ---------- Previous update was at 03:32 PM ----------

Yes, That's right,,, and my question is where/what is delchi? Was it created in this code?

Does delchi mean "Delta Chi" ? This may be a statistical algorithm.

So you are looking for the number of times a value in the fourth field is less than or equal to a given value. *scratches head*

Oh!! Is delchi a predefined function here?!??!
Yes, actually that's what I am using the code for, statistics...
But I searched for help for the delchi function but I didn't find anything, that's why I am not sure if it's a predefined function...

No. In this example, delchi is a variable - not a function.