UNIX® Shells by Example, Third Edition

C.5. Setting the Shell Variable

name="Jacob Savage"    (Bourne and Korn Shell)set name = "Jacob Savage" ( C Shell )(The line from the datafile)Jacob Savage:408-298-7732:934 La Barbara Dr. , San Jose, CA:02/27/78:500000(The nawk command line)nawk -F: '$1 ~ /^' "$name" '/{print $2}' datafile(Output)408-298-7732

Step1:

Test your knowledge of the UNIX command at the command line before plugging in any shell variables.

nawk -F: '$1 ~ /^Jacob Savage/{print $2}' filename(Output)408-298-7732

Step 2:

Plug in the shell variable without changing anything else. Leave all quotes as they were.

nawk -F: '$1 ~ /^$name/{print $2}' datafile

Starting at the left-hand side of the awk command leave the first quote as is; right before the shell dollar sign in $name, ...