AWK - Re: awk & shell variables containing blanks

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Re: awk & shell variables containing blanks

Janis Papanagnou

2008-01-17, 6:59 pm

Mark wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Currently I am experiencing a small issue with awk search patterns &
> korn shell variables.
> I simplified my problem to the following example (which will explain
> itself I suppose) :
>
> $ x="a b"
> $ awk '/'$x'/' <file>
> awk: line 1: runaway regular expression /a ...
>
> Can anyone tell me how to get around it? Probably a small thing, but I
> can't seem to find the answer ...

As long as there are no regexp meta-characters in the search string
pass them as awk variables...

awk -v pattern="$x" '$0~pattern' file

Janis

>
>
> Thanks!
>
> Mark

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