Hi all,

I'm having problems with a "&%=?!""-awk script and hopefully somebody of you pros can help me:

Having a file with the following content:

name department
a 1
b 1
c 2
d 3
e 3
f 4
g 5
a 5
...

I need to generate a file for every deparment containing all names which belong to this department.

i.e. department1.txt will contain

a
b

department2.txt will contain

c

etc.

But I'm not so far yet ... here's my code:

awk '{
cline = $0
dept = $2
print "dept: " dept # debug
if ((getline nline) > 0 ) {
nextdept = substr($2, nline)
print "next dept: " nextdept #debug
if (cline == nline) {
print "\n next dept is the same"
print $2 >> "dept1.txt"
} else {
print "next dept differs"
print $2 >> "dept2.txt"
}
} else
print "EOF"
}' input.txt


And here's the output:

dept: 1
next dept: 1
next dept differs

dept: 2
next dept: 2
next dept differs

dept: 3
next dept: 3
next dept differs

dept: 5
EOF

So it's not doing the if-clause correctly.
Do you know how I can dynamically change the filename in awk?

Like

print dept > dept_$dept.txt?

Thanks!

Romy

Why not simply this?
To build the file name just use string concatenation and protect it using parentheses. See here for more details.