Hatrack River Forum: Need awk search Command substitution help

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Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :

So inorder to check to see if $x already exists in /Pract.file

I'm trying to do awk '/$x/' Pract and if it works should display all lines that are in the variable "x" which is echo x="`echo $y | cut -d' ' -f2 | cut -c1-3``echo $y | cut -c1-3`"

However when I run it it does this:

[cs326_2@Linux2.cs] x="`echo $y | cut -d' ' -f2 | cut -c1-3``echo $y | cut -c1-3`"

[cs326_2@Linux2.cs] awk '/$x/' Pract
[cs326_2@Linux2.cs]

IT ran, there's no syntax error but its not displaying anything, in theory I want it to display lines of text allowing me to do a conditional statement in regarding if the name already exists. Whats wrong?

(Bash shell I believe)

Posted by Dav (Member # 8217) on :

Without offering to do your hw for you, here's a little pointer: Single quotes don't allow variable substitution in the bash shell. So, your '/$x/' is trying to match on the end of line, *followed* by x on the same line, which of course is impossible.

Beyond that, it's not clear to me what you're trying to do...

Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :

You didn't look at my example awk command from before, either [Razz]

Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :

huh? for the split I looked at, for assigning a number I looked at, but I dont think I recal how to get output/assign a variable.