1

I have some files in a directory. And I want to add some lines at top and end of file using awk.

Example: My awk command:

awk 'BEGIN { print "line1\nline2" } { print $0 } END { print "line3\nline4" }' file |tee file

By using above command I can add line1 & line2 at the top & line3, line4 at the end of file

Now I want to do same action for all files that are exist in current directory.

If I use :

awk 'BEGIN { print "line1\nline2" } { print $0 } END { print "line3\nline4" }' *

Then I get output on terminal screen but I can't redirect to (or overwrite) all files.

So, I tried following (To find + awk):

find -type f -exec awk 'BEGIN { print "line1\nline2" } { print $0 } END { print "line3\nline4" }' '{}' \;

By using above command I can print output on screen and hence to overwrite files,

I've tried following (To find + awk + overwrite with tee), but it getting error:

$ find -type f -exec awk 'BEGIN { print "line1\nline2" } { print $0 } END { print "line3\nline4" }' '{}' | tee '{}' \;
find: missing argument to `-exec'

Hence, How can I use awk to overwrite (i.e: with |tee or something else) for all files in current directory by command?

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3
  • Like sed -i, GNU awk has an in-place editing plugin: gawk -i inplace. Commented Jan 20, 2015 at 14:34
  • 2
    @muru, -i inplace doesn't work for BEGIN and END statements though (works for BEGINFILE, but not ENDFILE) Commented Jan 20, 2015 at 14:38
  • 3
    Decision1: Use sed instead of awk (sed -is -e '1 i\...' -e '$ a\...' *). Decision2 Use loop for for each file in directory (for file in *; do awk '...' "$file" | tee "$file" ; done). Commented Jan 20, 2015 at 14:40

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
6

With GNU awk 4.1 or above:

find . -type f -exec awk '
   @load "inplace"
   BEGINFILE {
     inplace_begin(FILENAME, "")
     print "line1\nline2"
   }
   {print}
   ENDFILE {
     print "line3\nline4"
     inplace_end(FILENAME, "")
   }' {} +
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5
  • What is meant by GNU awk : awk or gawk ? Commented Jan 20, 2015 at 16:37
  • Find: Only one instance of {} is supported with -exec ... + Commented Jan 20, 2015 at 16:39
  • 2
    @Pandya, on GNU systems, awk will generally be the GNU implementation. On non-GNU systems, GNU awk may be available as gawk. Commented Jan 20, 2015 at 17:00
  • @Pandya, I can see only one instance of {} in the code I supplied. Are you sure you copied it properly? Commented Jan 20, 2015 at 17:01
  • I am using Trisquel GNU/Linux and only GNU awk version 4.0 is available for Belenos (latest) release. So I've to download GNU awk 4.1 from Ubuntu's utopic(14.10) branch! Commented Jan 21, 2015 at 13:41
2

Decision1: Use GNU sed instead of awk 

sed -i -e '1 i\line1\nline2' -e '$ a\line3\nline4' ./*

Decision2: Use loop for for each file in directory

for file in ./*
do
  awk '
       BEGIN { print "line1\nline2" }
       { print $0 }
       END { print "line3\nline4" }
      ' "$file" > "$file".tmp &&
    mv -f "$file".tmp "$file"
done
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2
  • 1
    Note that the sed one won't work for empty files. About the second one, using a fixed file name in /tmp is dangerous and means mv will do a file copy if /tmp is a different filesystem. Also note that permissions and ownership won't be preserved and that would break symlinks. Commented Jan 20, 2015 at 17:18
  • As Stéphane Chazelas's answer uses only awk and resulting best one, I accepted it. Anyway +1 Commented Jan 21, 2015 at 13:34

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