passing command line arguments to awk

[Jim Chappell]

In article <731 at scc.UUCP>, steiny at scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) writes:
> In article <753 at moscom.UUCP>, de at moscom.UUCP (Dave Esan) writes:
> > > 
> > > I surrender  --  is it possible to pass command line arguments to awk?
> > > If so - how.  
> 
> 	awk ' statement ; . . . ' file
> 
> be sure and use single quotes!   Lots of awk characters have
> special meaning to the shell.  The following prints the uids in
> the password file from highest to lowest:
> 
> 	awk -F: '{ print $3 }' | sort -n -r


I bet it sits there forever more because of missing input, viz:


> 	awk -F: '{ print $3 }' \
				/etc/passwd \
>						 | sort -n -r


Why not use the capabilities of awk documented in my (but maybe not your)
users manual:

SYNOPSIS
	awk [ -Fc } [ prog ] [ parameters ] [ files ]
			     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

...
	_parameters_ in the form of x=...y=...etc., may be passed to awk.



Here's the stub of a script I use to produce reports by month of year, and
need to know how many days are in the month:

awk '{ ...

	printf "Report for %s\n\n",month
	for (i=1; i<=dm; i++)
	...

      } ' month=$1 \
	dm=`case $1 in
	Jan|Mar|May|Jul|Aug|Oct|Dec) echo 31;;
	Feb) echo 28;;
	Apr|Jun|Sep|Nov) echo 31;;
     esac`  data


Jim
-- 
Jim Chappell  ...!seismo!vrdxhq!ms3!jrc 
ISN Corp.
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