Escaping backslash in AWK in command substituion

bash awk backslash command-substitution
Bill picture Bill · May 28, 2013 · Viewed 16.4k times · Source

I am trying to escape backslash in AWK. This is a sample of what I am trying to do.

Say, I have a variable

$echo $a
hi

The following works

$echo $a | awk '{printf("\\\"%s\"",$1)'}
\"hi"

But, when I am trying to save the output of the same command to a variable using command substitution, I get the following error:

$ q=`echo $a | awk '{printf("\\\"%s\"",$1)'}`
awk: {printf("\\"%s\"",$1)}
awk:               ^ backslash not last character on line

I am unable to understand why command substitution is breaking the AWK. Thanks a lot for your help.

Answer

jaypal singh picture jaypal singh · May 28, 2013

Try this:

q=$(echo $a | awk '{printf("\\\"%s\"",$1)}')

Test:

$ a=hi
$ echo $a
hi
$ q=$(echo $a | awk '{printf("\\\"%s\"",$1)}')
$ echo $q
\"hi"

Update:

It will, it just gets a littler messier.

q=`echo $a | awk '{printf("\\\\\"%s\"",$1)}'`

Test:

$ b=hello
$ echo $b
hello
$ t=`echo $b | awk '{printf("\\\\\"%s\"",$1)}'`
$ echo $t
\"hello"

Reference

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