Issue
I think the question speaks for itself. I am a beginner so please let me know if this is possible or not. If not, came you give me a better solution because my bash script depends heavily on certain awk statements but the majority of the script is in bash. I am comparing two files using an awk statement in my bash script. Basically checking if the values are the same or not. (see the files below)
file1.txt
Name Col1 Col2 Col3
-----------------------
row1 1 4 7
row2 2 5 8
row3 3 6 9
file2.txt
Name Col1 Col2 Col3
-----------------------
row1 1 4 7
row2 2 5 999
Here is the structure of my bash script:
#!/bin/bash
.
.
.
awk -F '\t' '
# skips first two lines
FNR < 2 {next}
FNR == NR {
for (i = 2; i <= NF; i++) {
a[i,$1] = $i;
}
b[$1];
next;
}
($1 in b) {
for (i = 2; i <= NF; i++)
{
# does something
}
}
' file1.txt file2.txt
.
.
.
I have a lot of repetitive code that are only useful in the awk statements and so I want to create a function that would be placed in the awk statement to avoid repetition. Is this possible?
Let me know if further explanation is required.
Solution
If you are asking how to reuse a piece of Awk code in multiple scripts without saving it in a separate file, you can define a shell string and interpolate it.
awkfn='function foo () { print "Hiya universe" }'
awk -F : "$awkfn"'BEGIN { foo() }'
Notice how you need double quotes for the variable to be interpolated, but generally want single quotes around your Awk code. I put a double-quoted string immediately next to a single-quoted string (no whitespace between them) but there are other ways to accomplish the same thing.
Answered By - tripleee Answer Checked By - Marilyn (WPSolving Volunteer)
