Les Mikesell <lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
An alternative is to have the awk script output the shell commands you want. That is, change your {system ("DOMAIN="...} to a print statement. You then execute the command created by your awk script in the calling shell's environment. Something along the lines of:aragonx@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:> I bet awk has it's own user list but before I go and subscribe to another > one, I figured I would ask here first. I have the following awk code that > is trying to set a variable of the shell it is running in. It doesn't > work and I've searched high and low to see how to get it to do so.> > The reason I don't just use DOMAIN= 'awk blah blah blah' is I want to set> more than one shell variable for each record. But I have to get this> working first. :( > > #!/bin/bash > > awk '{FS=":"}{system ("DOMAIN=" $1); }> {system ("DOMAIN="$1)}; > {system ("echo \"$DOMAIN\"")}; > ' /etc/passwd> > Any help would be appreciated.This isn't an awk question, it's a 'how unix works' question. A child process can't change anything in it's parent's environment. Your awk program will be a child of the shell running it; the system statements run yet another shell as a child under awk. All of those processes have their environment strings in protected memory (inherited shared but copy-on-write).The var=`command ..` will work, or you can do all of the work that needs the setting in the lowest level subprocess that has the right values.-- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
foo = `awk '{FS=":"}{printf "export DOMAIN=%s\n", $1}' < /etc/passwd`
`echo $foo`
After the above, $DOMAIN should have the value you want for the *last
entry* in /etc/passwd. Not sure if this is what you really want. That
may be:
foo=`awk 'BEGIN {FS=":"} $1 ~ /'$USER'/ {printf "export DOMAIN=%s\n", $1}' /etc/passwd`
`echo $foo`You'll find understanding quoting and order of execution is really useful when writing this kind of shell script. ;-)
Cheers, Dave -- Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. -- Ambrose Bierce
