Why is this variable not getting passed to awk?

Question

Possible Duplicate:
external variable in awk

How do I pass this variable below?

This doesn't work:

fname=testfile.txt
lsof | awk '/deleted/&&/$fname/ {print $4}'  *----no output*

While this works:

lsof | awk '/deleted/&&/testfile.txt/ {print $4}'
3r

use double quotes instead of single quotes – Rahul Patil Dec 20 '12 at 10:50 — Rahul Patil, Dec 20 '12 at 10:50

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 21 '20 at 12:25

2

This happens because shell variables are not expanded in single quotes. Use awk with -v to pass the pattern into awk like so:

fname=testfile.txt
lsof | awk -v pattern="$fname" '/deleted/ && $0 ~ pattern { print $4 }'

edited Dec 21 '20 at 12:25

Kusalananda

answered Dec 20 '12 at 10:43

Chris Down

1 Answers1