Awk: can't open error

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi ,
In a directory i've the files in the following format
pay:year:mon:11789604
pay:year:mon:17675644
---
and i need to get 4th part of the above file name
so i used awk command in the below code

#!/bin/ksh
for test_data in pay*
do
   
 txt_awk = awk -F':' '{print $4;}' $test_data
 echo "$txt_awk"  
 
done

Error: 
awk: can't open
2

Hello,

Could you please try the following code and let me know.

 
txt_awk = `echo $test_data | awk -F':' '{print $4;}'`

Please do this change and try to run the script. It should work properly.

Thanks,
R. Singh

3

Hey,

If you want to take the fourth part of file name, you could do something like below,

ls pay*|awk -F':' '{print $4;}'

If you want to store the output of awk to a variable, you should use like below,

variable_name=`your command goes here`

or

variable_name=$(your command goes here)

Cheers!!!
-R

4

Thanks Ravinder, Rangarasan

I tried both of your option.
And the error is awk not found

#!/bin/ksh
for test_data in pay*
do
 txt_awk = `echo $test_data | awk -F':' '{print $4;}'`
 echo "$txt_awk"
done

And tried like below also

#!/bin/ksh
for test_data in pay*
do
 txt_awk = `$test_data | awk -F':' '{print $4;}'`
 echo "$txt_awk"
done

In both cases awk command not found error

Thanks

5

You don't need an awk code inside for loop to do this. You can use parameter substitution:

#!/bin/ksh

for file in pay*
do
        file="${file##*:}"
        print "$file"
done

If you are writing a shell script, always use shell built-ins where ever possible.

1 Like
6

Thank You Yoda,
It worked .

Could you give some idea on command
${file##*:}

7

${file##*:} deletes the largest matching pattern (matches from beginning) until colon :

Since I put asterisks * it deletes every character before that last colon :

For further reference: Parameter Substitution

1 Like
8

smile689:

You cannot have whitespace around the equals sign in a variable assignment. You made that mistake even when testing rangarasan's suggestion.

Also, I suspect that the correct error message involved "txt_awk" not being found, and not simply "awk".

Regards,
Alister