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From: jwp@uwmacc.UUCP (Jeffrey W Percival)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: 2.8BSD awk question
Message-ID: <586@uwmacc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 26-Nov-86 14:44:22 EST
Article-I.D.: uwmacc.586
Posted: Wed Nov 26 14:44:22 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Nov-86 20:42:49 EST
Organization: UWisconsin-Madison Academic Comp Center
Lines: 41
Keywords: awk 2.8bsd strings

I have a text file of this form:

header
1 ...
2 ...
3 ...
header
4 ...
5 ...
6 ...

and so on... the numbered lines have other information on them,
and the same header occurs every Nth line.  I wanted to change
the frequency with which the header appears (every Mth line, say)
so I have this awk script:

		{
			if ($1 == "PKT#") {
				header = "$0"
				next
			} else {
				if ($1 % 50 == 0) {
					print ""
					print $header
				}
				print $0
			}
		}

See, when I come across a header, I just want to stash it away.
After every 50th line, I want to put that header out with a form feed.

The problem is that the string variable "header" gets assigned every line.
Instead of being a storage place for the header, it always contains
the current value of $0.  So instead of getting, for example, a form
feed and a header and then line 50, I get a form feed and 2 copies of
line 50.

Is this an awk bug?
-- 
	Jeff Percival ...!uwvax!uwmacc!sal70!jwp or ...!uwmacc!jwp