Why my awk doesn't work?

Shell Programming and Scripting
1 
root@SDP_Wildcat_Pass-3-C1:~# cat /proc/driver/rtc                                 
rtc_time    : 05:29:40
rtc_date    : 2014-12-19
alrm_time    : 01:51:53
alrm_date    : 2014-12-20
alarm_IRQ    : no
alrm_pending    : no
update IRQ enabled    : no
periodic IRQ enabled    : no
periodic IRQ frequency    : 1024
max user IRQ frequency    : 64
24hr        : yes
periodic_IRQ    : no
update_IRQ    : no
HPET_emulated    : yes
BCD        : yes
DST_enable    : no
periodic_freq    : 1024
batt_status    : okay

it's wrong with below command

root@SDP_Wildcat_Pass-3-C1:~# cat /proc/driver/rtc |awk -F: "/alrm_time/{print $3}"
alrm_time    : 01:51:53
2

Could be quoting issue

akshay@nio:/tmp$ awk -F: "/alrm_time/{print $3}" file
alrm_time    : 01:51:53

akshay@nio:/tmp$ awk -F: '/alrm_time/{print $3}' file
51

akshay@nio:/tmp$ akshay=123; awk -F: "/alrm_time/{print $akshay}" file
123
1 Like
3

What's wrong? Which result do you want to get?

4

to get "51"

5

Two mistakes.

  1. $3 is substituted by the shell even within "quotes". You need 'single quotes'.
  2. the field delimiter : is wrong, there would be only two fields (with spaces). The default delimiter (white space) would work with $3 here. A more sophisticated delimiter is
    -F ' +: +' and $2 is the value without leading spaces.
< /proc/driver/rtc awk -F ' +: +' '$1=="alrm_time" {print $2}'

---------- Post updated at 10:09 AM ---------- Previous update was at 09:51 AM ----------

Just seeing you want the second field of the value. Then the : and $3 are ok.