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From: karish@forel.stanford.edu (Chuck Karish)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: AWK/shell quoting
Message-ID: <6954@lindy.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 7 Jan 90 15:38:11 GMT
References: <487@longway.TIC.COM> <166@omaha1.UUCP> <18067@umn-cs.CS.UMN.EDU> <1990Jan6.233340.9978@smsc.sony.com> <2367@leah.Albany.Edu>
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Reply-To: karish@forel.stanford.edu (Chuck Karish)
Organization: Mindcraft, Inc.
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In article <2367@leah.Albany.Edu> emb978@leah.Albany.EDU.UUCP
(Eric M. Boehm) wrote:
>In article <18067@umn-cs.CS.UMN.EDU> mike@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu
>(Mike Haertel) writes:
>>In article <166@omaha1.UUCP> wcc@omaha1.UUCP (William C Carey) writes:
>>>Any of the luminaries out there know how to get 'awk' (not nawk) to ouput a
>>>single-quote character ( ascii 0x27 ).
>>2.  You can do it by cooperating with shell quoting.  This is hairy,
>>but will print a single quote:
>>
>>	awk 'BEGIN {print "'"'"'"}'
>
>This solutions seem to be overly complex. Maybe I'm picking nits but
>wouldn't this be easier and simpler?
>
>awk 'BEGIN { print "\'" }'

Have you tried it?

    % awk 'BEGIN { print "\'" }'
    Unmatched ".
    % sh
    $ awk 'BEGIN { print "\'" }'
    > 
    > '
    > "
    awk: newline in string  }'... at source line 1
     context is
            BEGIN { print "\ }' >>> 
     <<< 
    awk: syntax error at source line 3
    awk: illegal statement at source line 3
            missing }


Here's what those nested quotes do:

    awk 'BEGIN {print "'"'"'"}'
                      1234321

    1) Usual quotes to set off a constant string for the 'print' directive
    2) Match the single quotes that set off the whole awk script; text
       within is interpreted by the shell.
    3) Quotes to protect the data from interpretation by the shell.
    4) The data, to be printed unchanged.

	Chuck Karish		karish@mindcraft.com
	(415) 323-9000		karish@forel.stanford.edu