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From: Ed Morton <mortons...@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.awk
Subject: Re: Searching strings with awk
Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2008 12:57:52 -0800 (PST)
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On Dec 10, 12:47=A0pm, "Chris F.A. Johnson" <cfajohn...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> On 2008-12-10, Kenny McCormack wrote:
>
> > In article <a41c5c09-c8f8-4958-a502-fa99f9051...@m22g2000vbl.googlegrou=
ps.com>,
> > Ed Morton =A0<mortons...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > ...
> >>No, that's not how you pass the value of shell variables to an awk
> >>script. Blah, blah, blah.
>
> > No, that *is* how he passes shell variables to an AWK script.
> > It also happens to be how I (usually) do it.
>
> =A0 =A0And your script would fail if $1 contains spaces. I would hope tha=
t
> =A0 =A0you actually do this:
>
> gawk ' BEGIN { RS=3D"---*" }
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0/'"$pattern"'/ ' "$@"

and then it'd still fail with obscure error messages for some other
values of pattern, e.g.:

$ pattern=3D"foo
bar"
$ gawk ' BEGIN { RS=3D"---*" }
       /'"$pattern"'/ ' "$@" file
gawk: cmd. line:1:        /foo
gawk: cmd. line:1:         ^ unterminated regexp
gawk: cmd. line:3: bar/
gawk: cmd. line:3:      ^ unexpected newline or end of string

$ pattern=3D"\\"
$ gawk ' BEGIN { RS=3D"---*" }
       /'"$pattern"'/ ' "$@" file
gawk: cmd. line:1:        /\/
gawk: cmd. line:1:         ^ unterminated regexp

$ pattern=3D"12/25/2008"
$ gawk ' BEGIN { RS=3D"---*" }
       /'"$pattern"'/ ' "$@" file
gawk: cmd. line:2:        /12/25/2008/
gawk: cmd. line:2:                     ^ unexpected newline or end of
string

Regards,

    Ed.