awk variable

[Babak_4]

Hi,

Is there any way to read a variable which is defined within an awk?

Thanks,

Babak

[Francisco J. Soler]

Hi Babak, where do you want to read the variable?, What do you want to do with the variable?

Frank.

[Nicolas Dumeige]

Hello,

# echo "a b c" | awk '{ print $2 }' | read var
# echo $var
b

Not sure what you're looking thought ?

Cheers

Nicolas

[Babak_4]

If I pass a vaiable to an awk and change its value, how can I have access to its updated value after exiting from awk. I'm looking for other solution than writing to stdout and assigning to a shell variable or writing to a file and read it from it, if there is any.

Thanks,

Babak

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

What you are trying to do is forbidden by UNIX design. A child process is never allowed to alter a parent. The information flow is always parent to child; never the reverse. You couldn't even do this with C.

Your only option is to print the value to stdout and capture with a read. Bear in mind, that you could do something like
print 3 variables in awk on the same line and then read A B C in the shell would capture each of them.

[Babak_4]

Clay,

Thanks for your clarification.

Babak