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Reading Input Files

In the typical awk program, all input is read either from the standard input (by default the keyboard, but often a pipe from another command) or from files whose names you specify on the awk command line. If you specify input files, awk reads them in order, reading all the data from one before going on to the next. The name of the current input file can be found in the built-in variable FILENAME (see section Built-in Variables).

The input is read in units called records, and processed by the rules one record at a time. By default, each record is one line. Each record is split automatically into fields, to make it more convenient for a rule to work on its parts.

On rare occasions you will need to use the getline command, which can do explicit input from any number of files (see section Explicit Input with getline).

How Input is Split into Records

The awk language divides its input into records and fields. Records are separated by a character called the record separator. By default, the record separator is the newline character, defining a record to be a single line of text.

Sometimes you may want to use a different character to separate your records. You can use a different character by changing the built-in variable RS. The value of RS is a string that says how to separate records; the default value is "\n", the string containing just a newline character. This is why records are, by default, single lines.

RS can have any string as its value, but only the first character of the string is used as the record separator. The other characters are ignored. RS is exceptional in this regard; awk uses the full value of all its other built-in variables.

You can change the value of RS in the awk program with the assignment operator, `=' (see section Assignment Expressions). The new record-separator character should be enclosed in quotation marks to make a string constant. Often the right time to do this is at the beginning of execution, before any input has been processed, so that the very first record will be read with the proper separator. To do this, use the special BEGIN pattern (see section BEGIN and END Special Patterns). For example:

awk 'BEGIN { RS = "/" } ; { print $0 }' BBS-list

changes the value of RS to "/", before reading any input. This is a string whose first character is a slash; as a result, records are separated by slashes. Then the input file is read, and the second rule in the awk program (the action with no pattern) prints each record. Since each print statement adds a newline at the end of its output, the effect of this awk program is to copy the input with each slash changed to a newline.

Another way to change the record separator is on the command line, using the variable-assignment feature (see section Invoking awk).

awk '{ print $0 }' RS="/" BBS-list

This sets RS to `/' before processing `BBS-list'.

Reaching the end of an input file terminates the current input record, even if the last character in the file is not the character in RS.

The empty string, "" (a string of no characters), has a special meaning as the value of RS: it means that records are separated only by blank lines. See section Multiple-Line Records, for more details.

The awk utility keeps track of the number of records that have been read so far from the current input file. This value is stored in a built-in variable called FNR. It is reset to zero when a new file is started. Another built-in variable, NR, is the total number of input records read so far from all files. It starts at zero but is never automatically reset to zero.

If you change the value of RS in the middle of an awk run, the new value is used to delimit subsequent records, but the record currently being processed (and records already processed) are not affected.

Examining Fields

When awk reads an input record, the record is automatically separated or parsed by the interpreter into chunks called fields. By default, fields are separated by whitespace, like words in a line. Whitespace in awk means any string of one or more spaces and/or tabs; other characters such as newline, formfeed, and so on, that are considered whitespace by other languages are not considered whitespace by awk.

The purpose of fields is to make it more convenient for you to refer to these pieces of the record. You don't have to use them--you can operate on the whole record if you wish--but fields are what make simple awk programs so powerful.

To refer to a field in an awk program, you use a dollar-sign, `$', followed by the number of the field you want. Thus, $1 refers to the first field, $2 to the second, and so on. For example, suppose the following is a line of input:

This seems like a pretty nice example.

Here the first field, or $1, is `This'; the second field, or $2, is `seems'; and so on. Note that the last field, $7, is `example.'. Because there is no space between the `e' and the `.', the period is considered part of the seventh field.

No matter how many fields there are, the last field in a record can be represented by $NF. So, in the example above, $NF would be the same as $7, which is `example.'. Why this works is explained below (see section Non-constant Field Numbers). If you try to refer to a field beyond the last one, such as $8 when the record has only 7 fields, you get the empty string.

Plain NF, with no `$', is a built-in variable whose value is the number of fields in the current record.

$0, which looks like an attempt to refer to the zeroth field, is a special case: it represents the whole input record. This is what you would use if you weren't interested in fields.

Here are some more examples:

awk '$1 ~ /foo/ { print $0 }' BBS-list

This example prints each record in the file `BBS-list' whose first field contains the string `foo'. The operator `~' is called a matching operator (see section Comparison Expressions); it tests whether a string (here, the field $1) matches a given regular expression.

By contrast, the following example:

awk '/foo/ { print $1, $NF }' BBS-list

looks for `foo' in the entire record and prints the first field and the last field for each input record containing a match.

Non-constant Field Numbers

The number of a field does not need to be a constant. Any expression in the awk language can be used after a `$' to refer to a field. The value of the expression specifies the field number. If the value is a string, rather than a number, it is converted to a number. Consider this example:

awk '{ print $NR }'

Recall that NR is the number of records read so far: 1 in the first record, 2 in the second, etc. So this example prints the first field of the first record, the second field of the second record, and so on. For the twentieth record, field number 20 is printed; most likely, the record has fewer than 20 fields, so this prints a blank line.

Here is another example of using expressions as field numbers:

awk '{ print $(2*2) }' BBS-list

The awk language must evaluate the expression (2*2) and use its value as the number of the field to print. The `*' sign represents multiplication, so the expression 2*2 evaluates to 4. The parentheses are used so that the multiplication is done before the `$' operation; they are necessary whenever there is a binary operator in the field-number expression. This example, then, prints the hours of operation (the fourth field) for every line of the file `BBS-list'.

If the field number you compute is zero, you get the entire record. Thus, $(2-2) has the same value as $0. Negative field numbers are not allowed.

The number of fields in the current record is stored in the built-in variable NF (see section Built-in Variables). The expression $NF is not a special feature: it is the direct consequence of evaluating NF and using its value as a field number.

Changing the Contents of a Field

You can change the contents of a field as seen by awk within an awk program; this changes what awk perceives as the current input record. (The actual input is untouched: awk never modifies the input file.)

Consider this example:

awk '{ $3 = $2 - 10; print $2, $3 }' inventory-shipped

The `-' sign represents subtraction, so this program reassigns field three, $3, to be the value of field two minus ten, $2 - 10. (See section Arithmetic Operators.) Then field two, and the new value for field three, are printed.

In order for this to work, the text in field $2 must make sense as a number; the string of characters must be converted to a number in order for the computer to do arithmetic on it. The number resulting from the subtraction is converted back to a string of characters which then becomes field three. See section Conversion of Strings and Numbers.

When you change the value of a field (as perceived by awk), the text of the input record is recalculated to contain the new field where the old one was. Therefore, $0 changes to reflect the altered field. Thus,

awk '{ $2 = $2 - 10; print $0 }' inventory-shipped

prints a copy of the input file, with 10 subtracted from the second field of each line.

You can also assign contents to fields that are out of range. For example:

awk '{ $6 = ($5 + $4 + $3 + $2) ; print $6 }' inventory-shipped

We've just created $6, whose value is the sum of fields $2, $3, $4, and $5. The `+' sign represents addition. For the file `inventory-shipped', $6 represents the total number of parcels shipped for a particular month.

Creating a new field changes the internal awk copy of the current input record--the value of $0. Thus, if you do `print $0' after adding a field, the record printed includes the new field, with the appropriate number of field separators between it and the previously existing fields.

This recomputation affects and is affected by several features not yet discussed, in particular, the output field separator, OFS, which is used to separate the fields (see section Output Separators), and NF (the number of fields; see section Examining Fields). For example, the value of NF is set to the number of the highest field you create.

Note, however, that merely referencing an out-of-range field does not change the value of either $0 or NF. Referencing an out-of-range field merely produces a null string. For example:

if ($(NF+1) != "")
    print "can't happen"
else
    print "everything is normal"

should print `everything is normal', because NF+1 is certain to be out of range. (See section The if Statement, for more information about awk's if-else statements.)

It is important to note that assigning to a field will change the value of $0, but will not change the value of NF, even when you assign the null string to a field. For example:

echo a b c d | awk '{ OFS = ":"; $2 = "" ; print ; print NF }'

prints

a::c:d
4

The field is still there, it just has an empty value. You can tell because there are two colons in a row.

Specifying how Fields are Separated

(This section is rather long; it describes one of the most fundamental operations in awk. If you are a novice with awk, we recommend that you re-read this section after you have studied the section on regular expressions, section Regular Expressions as Patterns.)

The way awk splits an input record into fields is controlled by the field separator, which is a single character or a regular expression. awk scans the input record for matches for the separator; the fields themselves are the text between the matches. For example, if the field separator is `oo', then the following line:

moo goo gai pan

would be split into three fields: `m', ` g' and ` gai pan'.

The field separator is represented by the built-in variable FS. Shell programmers take note! awk does not use the name IFS which is used by the shell.

You can change the value of FS in the awk program with the assignment operator, `=' (see section Assignment Expressions). Often the right time to do this is at the beginning of execution, before any input has been processed, so that the very first record will be read with the proper separator. To do this, use the special BEGIN pattern (see section BEGIN and END Special Patterns). For example, here we set the value of FS to the string ",":

awk 'BEGIN { FS = "," } ; { print $2 }'

Given the input line,

John Q. Smith, 29 Oak St., Walamazoo, MI 42139

this awk program extracts the string ` 29 Oak St.'.

Sometimes your input data will contain separator characters that don't separate fields the way you thought they would. For instance, the person's name in the example we've been using might have a title or suffix attached, such as `John Q. Smith, LXIX'. From input containing such a name:

John Q. Smith, LXIX, 29 Oak St., Walamazoo, MI 42139

the previous sample program would extract ` LXIX', instead of ` 29 Oak St.'. If you were expecting the program to print the address, you would be surprised. So choose your data layout and separator characters carefully to prevent such problems.

As you know, by default, fields are separated by whitespace sequences (spaces and tabs), not by single spaces: two spaces in a row do not delimit an empty field. The default value of the field separator is a string " " containing a single space. If this value were interpreted in the usual way, each space character would separate fields, so two spaces in a row would make an empty field between them. The reason this does not happen is that a single space as the value of FS is a special case: it is taken to specify the default manner of delimiting fields.

If FS is any other single character, such as ",", then each occurrence of that character separates two fields. Two consecutive occurrences delimit an empty field. If the character occurs at the beginning or the end of the line, that too delimits an empty field. The space character is the only single character which does not follow these rules.

More generally, the value of FS may be a string containing any regular expression. Then each match in the record for the regular expression separates fields. For example, the assignment:

FS = ", \t"

makes every area of an input line that consists of a comma followed by a space and a tab, into a field separator. (`\t' stands for a tab.)

For a less trivial example of a regular expression, suppose you want single spaces to separate fields the way single commas were used above. You can set FS to "[ ]". This regular expression matches a single space and nothing else.

FS can be set on the command line. You use the `-F' argument to do so. For example:

awk -F, 'program' input-files

sets FS to be the `,' character. Notice that the argument uses a capital `F'. Contrast this with `-f', which specifies a file containing an awk program. Case is significant in command options: the `-F' and `-f' options have nothing to do with each other. You can use both options at the same time to set the FS argument and get an awk program from a file.

The value used for the argument to `-F' is processed in exactly the same way as assignments to the built-in variable FS. This means that if the field separator contains special characters, they must be escaped appropriately. For example, to use a `\' as the field separator, you would have to type:

# same as FS = "\\" 
awk -F\\\\ '...' files ...

Since `\' is used for quoting in the shell, awk will see `-F\\'. Then awk processes the `\\' for escape characters (see section Constant Expressions), finally yielding a single `\' to be used for the field separator.

As a special case, in compatibility mode (see section Invoking awk), if the argument to `-F' is `t', then FS is set to the tab character. (This is because if you type `-F\t', without the quotes, at the shell, the `\' gets deleted, so awk figures that you really want your fields to be separated with tabs, and not `t's. Use `-v FS="t"' on the command line if you really do want to separate your fields with `t's.)

For example, let's use an awk program file called `baud.awk' that contains the pattern /300/, and the action `print $1'. Here is the program:

/300/   { print $1 }

Let's also set FS to be the `-' character, and run the program on the file `BBS-list'. The following command prints a list of the names of the bulletin boards that operate at 300 baud and the first three digits of their phone numbers:

awk -F- -f baud.awk BBS-list

It produces this output:

aardvark     555
alpo
barfly       555
bites        555
camelot      555
core         555
fooey        555
foot         555
macfoo       555
sdace        555
sabafoo      555

Note the second line of output. If you check the original file, you will see that the second line looked like this:

alpo-net     555-3412     2400/1200/300     A

The `-' as part of the system's name was used as the field separator, instead of the `-' in the phone number that was originally intended. This demonstrates why you have to be careful in choosing your field and record separators.

The following program searches the system password file, and prints the entries for users who have no password:

awk -F: '$2 == ""' /etc/passwd

Here we use the `-F' option on the command line to set the field separator. Note that fields in `/etc/passwd' are separated by colons. The second field represents a user's encrypted password, but if the field is empty, that user has no password.

According to the POSIX standard, awk is supposed to behave as if each record is split into fields at the time that it is read. In particular, this means that you can change the value of FS after a record is read, but before any of the fields are referenced. The value of the fields (i.e. how they were split) should reflect the old value of FS, not the new one.

However, many implementations of awk do not do this. Instead, they defer splitting the fields until a field reference actually happens, using the current value of FS! This behavior can be difficult to diagnose. The following example illustrates the results of the two methods. (The sed command prints just the first line of `/etc/passwd'.)

sed 1q /etc/passwd | awk '{ FS = ":" ; print $1 }'

will usually print

root

on an incorrect implementation of awk, while gawk will print something like

root:nSijPlPhZZwgE:0:0:Root:/:

There is an important difference between the two cases of `FS = " "' (a single blank) and `FS = "[ \t]+"' (which is a regular expression matching one or more blanks or tabs). For both values of FS, fields are separated by runs of blanks and/or tabs. However, when the value of FS is " ", awk will strip leading and trailing whitespace from the record, and then decide where the fields are.

For example, the following expression prints `b':

echo ' a b c d ' | awk '{ print $2 }'

However, the following prints `a':

echo ' a b c d ' | awk 'BEGIN { FS = "[ \t]+" } ; { print $2 }'

In this case, the first field is null.

The stripping of leading and trailing whitespace also comes into play whenever $0 is recomputed. For instance, this pipeline

echo '   a b c d' | awk '{ print; $2 = $2; print }'

produces this output:

   a b c d
a b c d

The first print statement prints the record as it was read, with leading whitespace intact. The assignment to $2 rebuilds $0 by concatenating $1 through $NF together, separated by the value of OFS. Since the leading whitespace was ignored when finding $1, it is not part of the new $0. Finally, the last print statement prints the new $0.

The following table summarizes how fields are split, based on the value of FS.

FS == " "
Fields are separated by runs of whitespace. Leading and trailing whitespace are ignored. This is the default.

FS == any single character
Fields are separated by each occurrence of the character. Multiple successive occurrences delimit empty fields, as do leading and trailing occurrences.

FS == regexp
Fields are separated by occurrences of characters that match regexp. Leading and trailing matches of regexp delimit empty fields.

Reading Fixed-width Data

(This section discusses an advanced, experimental feature. If you are a novice awk user, you may wish to skip it on the first reading.)

gawk 2.13 introduced a new facility for dealing with fixed-width fields with no distinctive field separator. Data of this nature arises typically in one of at least two ways: the input for old FORTRAN programs where numbers are run together, and the output of programs that did not anticipate the use of their output as input for other programs.

An example of the latter is a table where all the columns are lined up by the use of a variable number of spaces and empty fields are just spaces. Clearly, awk's normal field splitting based on FS will not work well in this case. (Although a portable awk program can use a series of substr calls on $0, this is awkward and inefficient for a large number of fields.)

The splitting of an input record into fixed-width fields is specified by assigning a string containing space-separated numbers to the built-in variable FIELDWIDTHS. Each number specifies the width of the field including columns between fields. If you want to ignore the columns between fields, you can specify the width as a separate field that is subsequently ignored.

The following data is the output of the w utility. It is useful to illustrate the use of FIELDWIDTHS.

 10:06pm  up 21 days, 14:04,  23 users
User     tty       login  idle   JCPU   PCPU  what
hzuo     ttyV0     8:58pm            9      5  vi p24.tex 
hzang    ttyV3     6:37pm    50                -csh 
eklye    ttyV5     9:53pm            7      1  em thes.tex 
dportein ttyV6     8:17pm  1:47                -csh 
gierd    ttyD3    10:00pm     1                elm 
dave     ttyD4     9:47pm            4      4  w 
brent    ttyp0    26Jun91  4:46  26:46   4:41  bash 
dave     ttyq4    26Jun9115days     46     46  wnewmail 

The following program takes the above input, converts the idle time to number of seconds and prints out the first two fields and the calculated idle time. (This program uses a number of awk features that haven't been introduced yet.)

BEGIN  { FIELDWIDTHS = "9 6 10 6 7 7 35" }
NR > 2 {
    idle = $4
    sub(/^  */, "", idle)   # strip leading spaces
    if (idle == "") idle = 0
    if (idle ~ /:/) { split(idle, t, ":"); idle = t[1] * 60 + t[2] }
    if (idle ~ /days/) { idle *= 24 * 60 * 60 }
 
    print $1, $2, idle
}

Here is the result of running the program on the data:

hzuo      ttyV0  0
hzang     ttyV3  50
eklye     ttyV5  0
dportein  ttyV6  107
gierd     ttyD3  1
dave      ttyD4  0
brent     ttyp0  286
dave      ttyq4  1296000

Another (possibly more practical) example of fixed-width input data would be the input from a deck of balloting cards. In some parts of the United States, voters make their choices by punching holes in computer cards. These cards are then processed to count the votes for any particular candidate or on any particular issue. Since a voter may choose not to vote on some issue, any column on the card may be empty. An awk program for processing such data could use the FIELDWIDTHS feature to simplify reading the data.

This feature is still experimental, and will likely evolve over time.

Multiple-Line Records

In some data bases, a single line cannot conveniently hold all the information in one entry. In such cases, you can use multi-line records.

The first step in doing this is to choose your data format: when records are not defined as single lines, how do you want to define them? What should separate records?

One technique is to use an unusual character or string to separate records. For example, you could use the formfeed character (written \f in awk, as in C) to separate them, making each record a page of the file. To do this, just set the variable RS to "\f" (a string containing the formfeed character). Any other character could equally well be used, as long as it won't be part of the data in a record.

Another technique is to have blank lines separate records. By a special dispensation, a null string as the value of RS indicates that records are separated by one or more blank lines. If you set RS to the null string, a record always ends at the first blank line encountered. And the next record doesn't start until the first nonblank line that follows--no matter how many blank lines appear in a row, they are considered one record-separator. (End of file is also considered a record separator.)

The second step is to separate the fields in the record. One way to do this is to put each field on a separate line: to do this, just set the variable FS to the string "\n". (This simple regular expression matches a single newline.)

Another way to separate fields is to divide each of the lines into fields in the normal manner. This happens by default as a result of a special feature: when RS is set to the null string, the newline character always acts as a field separator. This is in addition to whatever field separations result from FS.

The original motivation for this special exception was probably so that you get useful behavior in the default case (i.e., FS == " "). This feature can be a problem if you really don't want the newline character to separate fields, since there is no way to prevent it. However, you can work around this by using the split function to break up the record manually (see section Built-in Functions for String Manipulation).

Explicit Input with getline

So far we have been getting our input files from awk's main input stream--either the standard input (usually your terminal) or the files specified on the command line. The awk language has a special built-in command called getline that can be used to read input under your explicit control.

This command is quite complex and should not be used by beginners. It is covered here because this is the chapter on input. The examples that follow the explanation of the getline command include material that has not been covered yet. Therefore, come back and study the getline command after you have reviewed the rest of this manual and have a good knowledge of how awk works.

getline returns 1 if it finds a record, and 0 if the end of the file is encountered. If there is some error in getting a record, such as a file that cannot be opened, then getline returns -1. In this case, gawk sets the variable ERRNO to a string describing the error that occurred.

In the following examples, command stands for a string value that represents a shell command.

getline
The getline command can be used without arguments to read input from the current input file. All it does in this case is read the next input record and split it up into fields. This is useful if you've finished processing the current record, but you want to do some special processing right now on the next record. Here's an example:

awk '{
     if (t = index($0, "/*")) {
          if (t > 1)
               tmp = substr($0, 1, t - 1)
          else
               tmp = ""
          u = index(substr($0, t + 2), "*/")
          while (u == 0) {
               getline
               t = -1
               u = index($0, "*/")
          }
          if (u <= length($0) - 2)
               $0 = tmp substr($0, t + u + 3)
          else
               $0 = tmp
     }
     print $0
}'

This awk program deletes all C-style comments, `/* ... */', from the input. By replacing the `print $0' with other statements, you could perform more complicated processing on the decommented input, like searching for matches of a regular expression. (This program has a subtle problem--can you spot it?)

This form of the getline command sets NF (the number of fields; see section Examining Fields), NR (the number of records read so far; see section How Input is Split into Records), FNR (the number of records read from this input file), and the value of $0.

Note: the new value of $0 is used in testing the patterns of any subsequent rules. The original value of $0 that triggered the rule which executed getline is lost. By contrast, the next statement reads a new record but immediately begins processing it normally, starting with the first rule in the program. See section The next Statement.

getline var
This form of getline reads a record into the variable var. This is useful when you want your program to read the next record from the current input file, but you don't want to subject the record to the normal input processing.

For example, suppose the next line is a comment, or a special string, and you want to read it, but you must make certain that it won't trigger any rules. This version of getline allows you to read that line and store it in a variable so that the main read-a-line-and-check-each-rule loop of awk never sees it.

The following example swaps every two lines of input. For example, given:

wan
tew
free
phore

it outputs:

tew
wan
phore
free

Here's the program:

awk '{
     if ((getline tmp) > 0) {
          print tmp
          print $0
     } else
          print $0
}'

The getline function used in this way sets only the variables NR and FNR (and of course, var). The record is not split into fields, so the values of the fields (including $0) and the value of NF do not change.

getline < file
This form of the getline function takes its input from the file file. Here file is a string-valued expression that specifies the file name. `< file' is called a redirection since it directs input to come from a different place.

This form is useful if you want to read your input from a particular file, instead of from the main input stream. For example, the following program reads its input record from the file `foo.input' when it encounters a first field with a value equal to 10 in the current input file.

awk '{
    if ($1 == 10) {
         getline < "foo.input"
         print
    } else
         print
}'

Since the main input stream is not used, the values of NR and FNR are not changed. But the record read is split into fields in the normal manner, so the values of $0 and other fields are changed. So is the value of NF.

This does not cause the record to be tested against all the patterns in the awk program, in the way that would happen if the record were read normally by the main processing loop of awk. However the new record is tested against any subsequent rules, just as when getline is used without a redirection.

getline var < file
This form of the getline function takes its input from the file file and puts it in the variable var. As above, file is a string-valued expression that specifies the file from which to read.

In this version of getline, none of the built-in variables are changed, and the record is not split into fields. The only variable changed is var.

For example, the following program copies all the input files to the output, except for records that say `@include filename'. Such a record is replaced by the contents of the file filename.

awk '{
     if (NF == 2 && $1 == "@include") {
          while ((getline line < $2) > 0)
               print line
          close($2)
     } else
          print
}'

Note here how the name of the extra input file is not built into the program; it is taken from the data, from the second field on the `@include' line.

The close function is called to ensure that if two identical `@include' lines appear in the input, the entire specified file is included twice. See section Closing Input Files and Pipes.

One deficiency of this program is that it does not process nested `@include' statements the way a true macro preprocessor would.

command | getline
You can pipe the output of a command into getline. A pipe is simply a way to link the output of one program to the input of another. In this case, the string command is run as a shell command and its output is piped into awk to be used as input. This form of getline reads one record from the pipe.

For example, the following program copies input to output, except for lines that begin with `@execute', which are replaced by the output produced by running the rest of the line as a shell command:

awk '{
     if ($1 == "@execute") {
          tmp = substr($0, 10)
          while ((tmp | getline) > 0)
               print
          close(tmp)
     } else
          print
}'

The close function is called to ensure that if two identical `@execute' lines appear in the input, the command is run for each one. See section Closing Input Files and Pipes.

Given the input:

foo
bar
baz
@execute who
bletch

the program might produce:

foo
bar
baz
hack     ttyv0   Jul 13 14:22
hack     ttyp0   Jul 13 14:23     (gnu:0)
hack     ttyp1   Jul 13 14:23     (gnu:0)
hack     ttyp2   Jul 13 14:23     (gnu:0)
hack     ttyp3   Jul 13 14:23     (gnu:0)
bletch

Notice that this program ran the command who and printed the result. (If you try this program yourself, you will get different results, showing you who is logged in on your system.)

This variation of getline splits the record into fields, sets the value of NF and recomputes the value of $0. The values of NR and FNR are not changed.

command | getline var
The output of the command command is sent through a pipe to getline and into the variable var. For example, the following program reads the current date and time into the variable current_time, using the date utility, and then prints it.

awk 'BEGIN {
     "date" | getline current_time
     close("date")
     print "Report printed on " current_time
}'

In this version of getline, none of the built-in variables are changed, and the record is not split into fields.

Closing Input Files and Pipes

If the same file name or the same shell command is used with getline more than once during the execution of an awk program, the file is opened (or the command is executed) only the first time. At that time, the first record of input is read from that file or command. The next time the same file or command is used in getline, another record is read from it, and so on.

This implies that if you want to start reading the same file again from the beginning, or if you want to rerun a shell command (rather than reading more output from the command), you must take special steps. What you must do is use the close function, as follows:

close(filename)

or

close(command)

The argument filename or command can be any expression. Its value must exactly equal the string that was used to open the file or start the command--for example, if you open a pipe with this:

"sort -r names" | getline foo

then you must close it with this:

close("sort -r names")

Once this function call is executed, the next getline from that file or command will reopen the file or rerun the command.

close returns a value of zero if the close succeeded. Otherwise, the value will be non-zero. In this case, gawk sets the variable ERRNO to a string describing the error that occurred.

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