awk script does not work when written as "one-liner"

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

In my quest to solve a bigger problem (See my previous post called "Create SQL DML insert statements from file using AWK or similar" - sorry, not allowed to post urls until I have > 5 posts) I'm trying to get my head round awk, but have some problem figuring out why the following script does work while the corresponding(?) one-liner does not?

Here is the script that works:

#! /usr/bin/awk -f

/^ ABC_/{
 g++
 f=$1
}
{ 
  print $0>f
}

It splits a large file into smaller files based on blocks of text starting with " ABC_". And it does work.

However, If I try to enter this as a one-liner like this:

awk '/^ ABC_/{g++ f=$1} {print $0>f}' largefile.txt

I get the following error:

awk: line 1: syntax error at or near =

Why? What is wrong with my one-liner?

2

missing semi colon after the g++

awk '/^ ABC_/{g++; f=$1} {print $0>f}' largefile.txt
1 Like
3

A missing semi colon it was - thank you very much itkamaraj!

---------- Post updated at 11:00 AM ---------- Previous update was at 09:42 AM ----------

Well, it worked fine on my Linux-box, but as soon as I moved it over to my really old Solaris server (Solaris 10 8/07) I get

awk: too many output files 10
 record number 55

So, based on info found elswhere on this forum, I tried to use nawk instead:

nawk '/^ ABC_/{g++; f=$1} {print $0>f; close(f)}' largefile.txt

But this gives me just empty files... Is there a workaround for my script when it comes to this limitation of 10 open files in Solaris? Can I tweak the script in some way?

---------- Post updated at 11:53 AM ---------- Previous update was at 11:00 AM ----------

I got past the number of open files limitation by using the POSIX compliant awk instead of the awk that is in the solaris standard path (/usr/bin/awk):

/usr/xpg4/bin/awk '/^ ABC_/{g++; f=$1} {print $0>f}' largefile.txt