Re: [PLUG] awk script weirdness

[Walt Mankowski <waltman@pobox.com>]

On Sun, Jan 26, 2003 at 10:44:26PM -0500, Jeff Abrahamson wrote:
> I have a canned awk script that I want to put in a file rather than a
> shell function. Should work, start the file
> 
>     #!/usr/bin/awk
> 
> (I've verified that that's awk.)
> 
> I get the error
> 
>     jeff@asterix:Research $ ./left-column
>     awk: 1: unexpected character '.'
>     jeff@asterix:Research $ cat left-column
>     #!/usr/bin/awk
>     jeff@asterix:Research $ 
> 
> Even if the "#!..." is the only line in the file.
> 
> Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

I haven't done much awk, but it appears that awk doesn't read the
program code from stdin.  You either need to enter the code on
the awk command line as a one-liner:

% awk 'BEGIN {print "hello, world"}'

or give the program as a command-line parameter:

% awk -f hello.awk

In either case, stdin is used as the default input, not the default
location of the source code.

> I know, I should just use perl for this, but awk would have worked...

I promise to not report you to the Perl police. :)

Walt

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