How do we pass multiple arguments into awk

abhinav192 · November 18, 2009, 7:46am

How do we pass multiple arguments into awk :

name=john
age=12

now i have to pass both age and name into awk.. how to do it?

like : awk -v var=...

danmero · November 18, 2009, 7:53am

Use -v

awk -v name=john -v age=12 'BEGIN{print name, age}'

aigles · November 18, 2009, 7:57am

If you don't need to use the variable in the BEGIN patten, you can also do :

awk 'awk script code' name=john age=12 inputfile

Jean-Pierre.

abhinav192 · November 18, 2009, 7:59am

thanks a lot guys

otheus · November 18, 2009, 9:08am

So despite the "BEGIN" drawback, this one has the advantage of being more portable. If you use GNU or Sun's xpg4-awk, -v will work.