Awk OFS issues

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi, Could anyone tell me what Im doing wrong here any help will be much appreciated

#!/bin/bash
ls -ltr /export/home/tjmoore > /export/home/tjmoore/log100
awk -F " " /export/home/tjmoore/log100 'BEGIN {OFS="\t";} {print $1,$2,$3,$4,$5,
$6,$7,$8,$9;}' > /export/home/tjmoore/log1001

I am getting this error message

awk: can't open BEGIN {OFS="\t";} {print $1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7,$8,$9;}
 record number 51
2

The awk script should appear before the file/s.

awk 'BEGIN {OFS="\t"} {print $1,$2,$3,$4,$5,
$6,$7,$8,$9}' /export/home/tjmoore/log100 > /export/home/tjmoore/log1001
3

Hi, thankyou for the help but Im still getting the below error message after trying your suggestion

awk: can't open BEGIN {OFS="\t";} {print $1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7,$8,$9;}
4

Still it is same as Elixir's code...

try

awk '{print $1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7,$8,$9}' OFS="\t" /export/home/tjmoore/log100 > /export/home/tjmoore/log1001
1 Like
5

Please post (exactly) what you typed in.

6

Hmm, is awk an alias or a wrapper script? What does

type awk

say?

7

Try like same way......

---------- Post updated at 06:38 AM ---------- Previous update was at 06:38 AM ----------

ls -ltr /export/home/tjmoore/log100 |awk '{print $1"\t"$2 }'>/export/home/tjmoore/log1001
8

Hi everyone thanks for all the help!

type awk

returns

awk is /usr/bin/awk

I currently have this and it seems to be working! However I can't seem to get the OFS to equal a "tab" character, however way I do it with quotes it will interpret \t literally and use \t as the OFS.
Any suggestions?

ls -ltr /export/home/tjmoore > /export/home/tjmoore/log100
awk '{print $1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7,$8,$9}' OFS="\t" /export/home/tjmoore/log100 >
/export/home/tjmoore/log1001

---------- Post updated at 08:49 AM ---------- Previous update was at 08:43 AM ----------

hi bmk, Ive tried what you suggested and it works great, how would I get this to run through the entire file, as currently it prints the 1st and 2nd field of the first line then stops

9

Assuming you are printing all the lines of ls -ltr with tab spacing...

ls -ltr /export/home/tjmoore | awk '{$1=$1}1' OFS="\t" >> /export/home/tjmoore/log1001

If "\t" is not getting reflected. then also try with /usr/bin/awk

If still "\t" is not working then try with " " .:slight_smile:

1 Like
10

Thankyou to everyone, I've ended up using bmk's method and managed to get it to work, thats for all your help much appreciated! :slight_smile: