2

I have around 1000 files where on each of them if the first field matches a specific number , i need to print the corresponding 3rd element . Since the number 7 below, is not constant and it based upon the output of previous script , when I am trying to pass a variable , it fails .

$cat ${i} | head -14 | awk '$1 == "7" {print $3}'
$Supervisor
$blah=7
$cat ${i} | head -14 | awk '$1 == "${blah}" {print $8}'

I have tried looking around with other combinations to escape/expand the variable inside the comparison , none of them seem to be able to expand the variable blah.

Jeff Schaller
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coolguy6764
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1 Answers1

7

Your best bet is probably to pass it as an awk variable with -v

head -14 "$i" | awk -v blah="$blah" '$1 == blah {print $8}'

or without the head part:

awk -v blah="$blah" 'NR > 14 {exit} $1 == blah {print $8}' "$i"
Eric Renouf
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