Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!udel!burdvax!wrp
From: wrp@PRC.Unisys.COM (William R. Pringle)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: bourne shell query
Message-ID: <14877@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM>
Date: 1 Sep 90 03:11:32 GMT
References: <26DC6447.15922@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca> <1209@wrs.wrs.com>
Organization: Unisys Corporation, Paoli Research Center; Paoli, PA
Lines: 29

In article <1209@wrs.wrs.com> roger@kymijoki.wrs.com (Roger Rohrbach) writes:
>fred@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Fred Whiteside) writes:
>
>>cd /usr/spool/news/comp/std/c
>>zots=$1
>>echo "Should ignore files with name < $zots"
>>files=`ls -rt * |grep -v '.*[a-zA-Z].*' | awk $1 '>=' $zots {print}`
>>echo $files
>
>
(Followed by several variations on how to arrange quotes so that
a shell variable can get into an AWK program.)

I'm surprised no one mentioned the simple way:

	awk '$1 >= MAX{print}' MAX=$zots -

The MAX=value sets the awk variable MAX to 'value', the dash is needed
to indicate using stdin.  You could eliminate the grep by letting awk
do it for you:

	awk '/^[0-9]*/{if ($1 >= MAX) print}' MAX=$zots -

No that we have probably confused the original poster beyond hope ...

Good luck!
Bill Pringle

The nice thing about Unix is that there are so many right answers!