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shivaa

12-07-2012 04:07 AM

Awk: Search for string containing "/"

Hello!
I want to search 2 strings (i.e. 6/Dec/2012 and string2) in a file file1 using awk. But problem is, how to avoid "/" in search string.
Code is somethnig like:

Code:

day=6  # Input taken from user

month=Dec # Input taken from user

year=2012 # Input taken from user

nawk '/$day\/$smonth\/$year/ && /string2/ {gsub(/string2=/,"",$11); print $11}' file1 > output.txt

And even if I do:

Code:

day=6  # Input taken from user

month=Dec # Input taken from user

year=2012 # Input taken from user

format=$day\/$month\/$year

nawk '/$format/ && /string2/ {gsub(/string2=/,"",$11); print $11}' file1 > output.txt

But nothing is working and everytime I can see an empty output.txt file. So any suggestion on how to rectify this escape sequence problem?

--------- ADDING INFO ---------
I have tried with following also, but... :(

Code:

format=$day\\/$month\\/$year

nawk '/$format/ && /string2/ {gsub(/string2=/,"",$11); print $11}' file1 > output.txt

markush

12-07-2012 04:40 AM

I can't help with awk, but for sed the following works

Code:

#!/usr/bin/bash



DAY="6"

MONTH="Dec"

YEAR="2012"



echo $DAY

echo $MONTH

echo $YEAR

cat datefile | sed -n "/$DAY\/$MONTH\/$YEAR/p"

where datefile is a file with the string you're searching for.

This means: When Bash should expand the variables, they have to be between doublequotes " and not singlequotes '

Markus

druuna

12-07-2012 04:49 AM

The problem arises from the use of single quotes (the shell does not expand variable).

You can still use single quotes, but you need to do it this way:

Code:

awk '/'$DAY'\/'$MONTH'\/'$YEAR'/ { print }' infile

Or (not sure nawk supports this) use double quotes:

Code:

awk "/$DAY\/$MONTH\/$YEAR/ { print }" infile

@markush: Useless use of a pipe and cat ;)

Code:

sed -n "/$DAY\/$MONTH\/$YEAR/p" datefile

markush

12-07-2012 05:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by druuna (Post 4844412)

...
@markush: Useless use of a pipe and cat ;)
...

Oh, too much code, thanks for the hint ;)

Markus

colucix

12-07-2012 05:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by druuna (Post 4844412)

Or (not sure nawk supports this) use double quotes

Just an aside note: it's not a matter of nawk supporting double quotes. They change only the shell behaviour: nawk receives the first argument without quotes. The problem is that the original nawk program contains double quotes and $ signs, so that they are substituted by the shell and not passed literally. To avoid this problem I'd suggest the following:

Code:

nawk -v date="$day/$smonth/$year" '$0 ~ date && $11 ~ "string2" {gsub(/string2=/,"",$11); print $11}' file1

Note that it doesn't need to escape slashes in the date variable assignment and it uses string constants instead of regexp (since you cannot put a variable name inside a regexp, otherwise it will be interpreted literally).

shivaa

12-08-2012 10:45 PM

Thanks everyone. It's resolved using both solutions, either by using single quotes inside single quotes or declaring the varialbe outside of search pattern.

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