assume I have a string
"1,2,3,4"
Now I want to replace, e.g. the 3rd field of the string by some different value.
"1,2,NEW,4"
I managed to do this with the following command:
echo "1,2,3,4" | awk -F, -v OFS=, '{$3="NEW"; print }'
Now the index for the column to be replaced should be passed as a variable. So in this case
index=3
How can I pass this to awk? Because this won't work:
echo "1,2,3,4" | awk -F, -v OFS=, '{$index="NEW"; print }'
echo "1,2,3,4" | awk -F, -v OFS=, '{$($index)="NEW"; print }'
echo "1,2,3,4" | awk -F, -v OFS=, '{\$$index="NEW"; print }'
Thanks for your help!
Have the shell interpolate the index in the awk program:
echo "1,2,3,4" | awk -F, -v OFS=, '{$'$index'="NEW"; print }'
Note how the originally single quoted awk program is split in three parts, a single quoted beginning '{$', the interpolated index value, followed by the single quoted remainder of the program.
This might work for you:
index=3
echo "1,2,3,4" | awk -F, -v OFS=, -v INDEX=$index '{$INDEX="NEW"; print }'
or:
index=3
echo "1,2,3,4" | sed 's/[^,]*/NEW/'$index
Here's a sed
uctive way to break the awk
wardness:
$ echo "1,2,3,4" | sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed -e $index's/.*/NEW/'
This is easily extendable to multiple indexes just by adding another -e $newindex's/.*/NEWNEW/'
# This should be faster than awk or sed.
str="1,2,3,4"
IFS=','
read -a f <<< "$str"
f[2]='NEW'
printf "${f[*]}"
With plain awk (I.E. Not gawk etc) I believe you'll have to use split( string, array, [fieldsep] );
change the array entry of choice and then join them back together with sprintf
or similar in a loop.
gawk allows you to have a variable as a field name, $index in your example. See here.
gawk is usually the default awk on Linux, so change your invocation to gawk "script" and see if it works.