awk: warning: escape sequence `\]' treated as plain `]'

Question

echo \"A:\\ B:\\ C:\\ D:\\\" | awk -F\'[:\\]\' \'{print $1}\'

Output:

awk: warning: escape sequence `\\]\' treated as plain `]\'

A         


        

Answer 1

This is also wrong:

echo "A:\ B:\ C:\ D:\"

You are escaping the " and it breaks the input, you need to remove it or use single quote.

awk does not like a single \ within field separator, so try:

echo 'A:\ B:\ C:\ D:\' | awk -F":|\\" '{print $1}'
A

Or you can escape it (single quote):

echo 'A:\ B:\ C:\ D:\' | awk -F'[:\\\\]' '{print $1}'
A

Or even more escaping (double quote):

echo 'A:\ B:\ C:\ D:\' | awk -F"[:\\\\\\\]" '{print $1}'
A