replacement string in awk

[Jdamian]

Hi

Do the substitution strings as \n work in sub() and gsub() awk functions ?

$ echo "A B" | awk '{ sub("A","\\1"); print }'
\1 B

P.D: '&' works fine

[curt larson_1]

the \n notation where \n matches the nth pattern previously saved by "\(" and "\)" is from the unix command sed, not from awk

for awk you'd do something like this:

a=abc
b=def
print "$a $b" |
awk '{
sub($1,$2);
print $1;
}'

with awk each input line forms a record containing any number of fields. each field can be referenced by its position in the record. $1 refers to the value of the first field; $2 to the second field, and so on. $0 refers to the entire record.