UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

So then I go back to my initial problem... how do we get that variable?

You don't. It's an input. It's something the program expects to be given as its second argument, see where it's set to $2 ?

I don't know, and I don't know how to figure it out

Well, what is this program supposed to do, why do you need it, and what happened to whoever wrote it? Presumably you're interested in it for more than pure curiosity, and a little context would help us make better guesses.

Heck...why not just post the script's contents?

What I wrote above is the full script of the file!

---------- Post updated at 05:12 PM ---------- Previous update was at 05:09 PM ----------

OOOH!!! Ok, I got it, this was really stupid...
Ok, so what I posted was the content of one file (script file) that iwas used in a different script with awk -f on a datafile to produce the output I posted in my first post in this thread!!!! delchi is the $2 of that file.... I just got it!!!!

Thank you all for all the help, I am so sorry for all the confusion...

Okay then you'd be the source of both $1 and $2... These are the first and second args given when calling the script (ie, script_name foo bar equate to $0 $1 $2 from the script's perspective...except for the awk portion...)