awk syntax error when creating an array

Question

I'm just trying to get started writing an awk script to test for inclusion in an array, however I seem to have a basic syntax error someplace.

#!/bin/bash


awk \
BEGIN {'myarray["foo"] = "bar" '} \
{' \
  print "$1" \
'} $1

If I take out the BEGIN line, then indeed the rest of the script works.

I have also tried it like this:

#!/bin/bash
awk \
{' \
  myarray["foo"] = "bar" \
  print "$1" \
'} $1

Here's the error I'm getting.

awk: syntax error at source line 1
 context is
     >>>  <<<
awk: bailing out at source line 1

not clear why you're doing {'myarray....'}. Normally you should just surround the whole awk script with one set of single quotes like awk 'BEGIN{ ...} { ..... } END {...} file > outFile`. You can get fancy with dbl-quotes to all allow shell vars to be visible, but @FredrikPihl 's advice is good. Good luck. — shellter
– shellter, Commented Dec 8, 2013 at 22:05

Fredrik Pihl · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-08 22:01:08Z

4

Try something like this:

#!/bin/bash

awk -v param="$1" '
BEGIN { myarray["foo"] = "bar"}
{
  print myarray["foo"]
  print param
}' $1

-v is the proper way to pass an variable into awks-domain:

-v var=val
       --assign var=val
              Assign  the  value  val to the variable var, before execution of
              the program begins.  Such variable values are available  to  the
              BEGIN block of an AWK program.

Example:

$ echo 1 > one_line_file

$ ./t.sh one_line_file 
bar
one_line_file

answered Dec 8, 2013 at 22:01

Fredrik Pihl

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