get the user input in awk

Question

Is there any way to read the user input through the awk programming? I try writing a script to read a file which contained student\'s name and ID. I have to get the name of

Answer 1

Assuming the input file is formatted as:

name<tab>id

pairs and you want to print the line where the name in the file matches the user input, try this:

awk '
BEGIN { FS=OFS="\t"; printf "Enter name: " }
NR == FNR { name = $0; next }
$1 == name
' - file

or with GNU awk you can use nextfile so you don't have to enter control-D after your input:

awk '
BEGIN { FS=OFS="\t"; printf "Enter name: " }
NR == FNR { name = $0; nextfile }
$1 == name
' - file

Post some sample input and expected output if that's not what you're trying to do.

Answer 2

I've tested with line

"awk 'BEGIN{printf "enter:";getline name<"/dev/tty"} {print $0} END{printf "[%s]", name}' < /etc/passwd" 

and for me is better solution and more readeable.

Answer 3

You can collect user input using the getline function. Make sure to set this in the BEGIN block. Here's the contents of script.awk:

BEGIN {
    printf "Enter the student's name: "
    getline name < "-"
}

$2 == name {
    print
}

Here's an example file with ID's, names, and results:

1 jonathan good
2 jane bad
3 steve evil
4 mike nice

Run like:

awk -f ./script.awk file.txt