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From: jbayer@ispi.UUCP (Jonathan Bayer)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: awk and shell question
Keywords: awk sh
Message-ID: <1163@ispi.UUCP>
Date: 16 Sep 89 13:43:16 GMT
Organization: Intelligent Software Products, Inc.
Lines: 52


HELP!!  I have been pulling my hair out over this seemingly simple
problem:

I have to get the user id, and then get the user description from /etc/passwd.

Now, getting the user id was easy.  The script is below:


LOGNAME=`who am i | awk '{
	logname=$1
	print logname
	}'`


LOGNAME is set nicely here.  However, when I try to do something similar
to /etc/passwd as follows:
a=" awk -F: '\$1 == \"$LOGNAME\" {
	user=\$5;
	print user
	}'"
USER=`cat /etc/passwd | $a`


I get the following error:


awk: syntax error at source line 1
 context is
	 >>> ' <<< 
awk: bailing out at source line 1



Now, the following line does work (when I hardcode in LOGNAME):


USER=`cat /etc/passwd | awk -F: '$1 == "root" { user=$5; print user }'`



So my question is, what am I doing wrong here?  I am not that fluent in awk,
so this doesn't make too much sense right now.

This is running on an SCO Xenix 386, 2.3.3 system.


JB
-- 
Jonathan Bayer		Intelligent Software Products, Inc.
(201) 245-5922		500 Oakwood Ave.
jbayer@ispi.COM		Roselle Park, NJ   07204