Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!rochester!ur-tut!ur-valhalla!badri
From: badri@valhalla.ee.rochester.edu (Badri Lokanathan)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Expansion of variables in sh scripts
Keywords: Forward quote, backword quote, double quote, auuuuuuuuugh!
Message-ID: <1159@valhalla.ee.rochester.edu>
Date: 14 Feb 88 04:19:40 GMT
Organization: UR Dept. of Electrical Engg, Rochester NY 14627
Lines: 23

Well, after several years of shell script writing, I thought I knew
everything about it, but I was wrong!

Given a 2 column file of data in two columns, the columns separated by
blanks. A script is desired which, among other things, searches for a
word in the I column and outputs the corresponding entry in the II column.

There are several ways of doing this; I want to know why the following
inconsistency took place (I tried it on BSD4.3):

#!/bin/sh
word=$1
result=`awk "/^${word}/{print \$2}" datafile`
echo $result
# This outputs the entire line, rather than the entry in the II column.
awk "/^${word}/{print \$2}" datafile
# This outputs only the entry in the II column, as expected.
######################### END SCRIPT ###########################
-- 
"I care about my fellow man            {) badri@valhalla.ee.rochester.edu
 Being taken for a ride,              //\\ {ames,caip,cmcl2,columbia,cornell,
 I care that things start changing   ///\\\ harvard,ll-xn,rutgers,topaz}!
 But there's no one on my side."-UB40 _||_   rochester!ur-valhalla!badri