How can I pass variables from awk to a shell command?

user_2191236 0
Viewed 102013

I am trying to run a shell command from within awk for each line of a file, and the shell command needs one input argument. I tried to use system(), but it didn't recognize the input argument.

Each line of this file is an address of a file, and I want to run a command to process that file. So, for a simple example I want to use 'wc' command for each line and pass $1to wc. 

awk '{system("wc $1")}' myfile
parameter-passing awk shell
5 Answers

I would suggest another solution:

awk '{print $1}' myfile | xargs wc

the difference is that it executes wc once with multiple arguments. It often works (for example, with kill command)

user_115793670
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