Runaway String Problem

Shell Programming and Scripting
1 
Database.txt
John:30:40

echo -n "New Title Please :"
read NewTitle
awk -F":"  'OFS = ":"{ $1 = "'$NewTitle'" ; print $0 } ' Database.txt> Database2.txt
mv Database2.txt Database.txt

what this does, is that when i input something into $NewTitle, it will update $1 which is "John" into the input which i key in earlier.

the problem i am having is that when i input a single line like "mark" into $NewTitle ,the thing is updated properly , but when i input a string such as "mark twain" , i will receive an error saying

awk: line 1: runaway string constant "ffe ...

what does this mean and how do i solve it?

2

You can try setting an awk variable using the -v option and then using that variable instead of the shell variable inside the awk command. This approach worked for me:

read new_title
echo $new_title
awk -F":" -v var="$new_title" 'OFS = ":"{ $1 = var ; print $0 }' testfile
3

Try fliiping around the quotes and escaping the double quotes:

$1 = '"\"$NewTitle\""'
4

thanks for the help guys, i solved it.