awk - concatenate two string variable and assign to a third

awk gawk
user3738926 picture user3738926 · Nov 20, 2014 · Viewed 140.7k times · Source

In awk, I have 2 fields: $1 and $2.

They are both strings that I want to concatenate and assign to a variable.

Answer

fedorqui 'SO stop harming' picture fedorqui 'SO stop harming' · Nov 20, 2014

Just use var = var1 var2 and it will automatically concatenate the vars var1 and var2:

awk '{new_var=$1$2; print new_var}' file

You can put an space in between with:

awk '{new_var=$1" "$2; print new_var}' file

Which in fact is the same as using FS, because it defaults to the space:

awk '{new_var=$1 FS $2; print new_var}' file

Test

$ cat file
hello how are you
i am fine
$ awk '{new_var=$1$2; print new_var}' file
hellohow
iam
$ awk '{new_var=$1 FS $2; print new_var}' file
hello how
i am

You can play around with it in ideone: http://ideone.com/4u2Aip

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