I want to run the system
command in an awk script and get its output stored in a variable. I've been trying to do this, but the command's output always goes to the shell and I'm not able to capture it. Any ideas on how this can be done?
Example:
$ date | awk --field-separator=! {$1 = system("strip $1"); /*more processing*/}
Should call the strip
system command and instead of sending the output to the shell, should assign the output back to $1
for more processing. Rignt now, it's sending output to shell and assigning the command's retcode to $1
.
Figured out.
We use awk's Two-way I/O
{
"strip $1" |& getline $1
}
passes $1 to strip and the getline takes output from strip back to $1