How to use a variable in an awk expression

Question

I\'m trying to make this command:

sed bla bla filename | awk \'{printf \"%s %s_entry_%.3f %.3f %.3f %.3f\",$1,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7}\'

But the thi

Answer 1

you can use -v option of awk to pass in variable from the shell

#!/bin/bash    
awk -v values="${values}" '{gsub("blah","replace");printf "%s %s_entry_"values ....}' file

the gsub() function is to replace what you have with that sed command. So just one awk command will do. sed is redundant in this case (and most other cases where awk is used)

Answer 2

If you mean that values is a shell variable, then this will work:

sed bla bla filename | awk '{printf "%s %s_entry_"ENVIRON["values"],$1,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7}'

Answer 3

Easiest to use actual awk variables:

sed bla bla filename | awk -v values="$values" '{printf "%s %s_entry_"values,$1,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7}'

Or with bash:

awk -v values="$values" '{printf "%s %s_entry_"values,$1,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7}' <(sed bla bla filename)