Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!nih-csl!lhc!ncifcrf!haven!uflorida!rex!wuarchive!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!ubc-cs!van-bc!twg!bill
From: bill@twg.bc.ca (Bill Irwin)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell
Subject: How to get AWK to output 2 fields at once
Message-ID: <297@twg.bc.ca>
Date: 28 Oct 90 19:20:04 GMT
Organization: The Westrheim Group, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 24

I  have what initially seemed to be a simple requirement:  get the  first
two fields from each line in file_1, and use them as a search pattern for
GREP to extract matching lines in file_2.  Sounds simple doesn't it?  Not
for  someone with very limited knowledge of AWK!  The first pass at  this
was:

for x in `cat file_1 | awk '{ print $1 " " $2 }'`
do
        grep "$x" file_2
done

Of course, the GREP routine executed with x having the value of the first
field  of  the  first line of file_1, then with the value of  the  second
field  of  the first line of file_1, then the first field of  the  second
line, .....

Is  there a way to get AWK to output "field_1 field_2" as the value of x,
so  that  this  can be used as the search pattern for GREP,  rather  than
"field_1" "field_2" "field_1" "field_2"?
-- 
Bill Irwin    -       The Westrheim Group     -    Vancouver, BC, Canada
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