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From: mcgrew@ichthous.Eng.Sun.COM (Darin McGrew)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Shell/gawk interaction
Keywords: Bourne shell, awk
Message-ID: <4500@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 13 Dec 90 23:21:33 GMT
References: <247@locke.water.ca.gov>
Sender: news@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca.
Lines: 23

rfinch@caldwr.water.ca.gov (Ralph Finch) writes:
>I do not understand why the following bourne shell script generates an
>error in the awk program:

The whitespace in $args is not being quoted, which causes the
gawk program argument to be broken up into several arguments.
The following should work better--

	#!/bin/sh
	filename=$1 ; shift
	nargs=$#  
	args="$*"
	echo $args

	gawk '
	BEGIN {
	args="'"$args"'"
	print args
	exit 
	}' $filename

Darin McGrew			mcgrew@Eng.Sun.COM
Affiliation stated for identification purposes only.