How can I prepend the value of a variable to a column in bash?

Asked Sep 05 '19 at 17:24

Active Sep 05 '19 at 17:27

Viewed 416 times

I have a script that outputs a column of text. I want to prepend each entry in the column with a string stored as a variable. How can I do this?

For example, consider the command

$ echo -e "john\npaul\ngeorge\nringo"
john
paul
george
ringo

Now, I'd like to prepend each entry in this column with the value of the environment variable $HOME. I've tried piping into awk like this:

$ echo -e "john\npaul\ngeorge\nringo" | awk '{printf("%s%s\n", $HOME, $1)}'
johnjohn
paulpaul
georgegeorge
ringoringo

This output is not what I'm looking for. What am I doing wrong?

edited Sep 05 '19 at 17:27

Jeff Schaller

asked Sep 05 '19 at 17:24

Brian Fitzpatrick

1

of those users' home directory, or the (single) value of the current user's $HOME? – Jeff Schaller Sep 05 '19 at 17:25
@JeffSchaller of the current user's $HOME. Didn't mean to imply that I was echoing actual users, just wanted to choose some somewhat arbitrary text. – Brian Fitzpatrick Sep 05 '19 at 17:28

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