conersting string to integer

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1

Hi
i am writing a shell script; I need to convert a string to integer so that i can use it in the 'awk' command to choose a field.

can you please help me. thank you.

2

read $1 $2 $3
if test "$1"="-f"

3

read $1 $2 $3
if test "$1"="-f"
then
fieldPos=$2
fileX=$3
awk '{print $fieldPos}' fileX
fi