jim@ism780b.UUCP (08/15/84)
Rather than either awk "BEGIN{id=$2;}{ printf(\"%8d %s\\n\", id++, \$0); }" $1 or awk " BEGIN {id=$2;} "' { printf ("%8d %s\n", id++, $0); } ' $1 I much prefer awk ' BEGIN {id='"$2"';} { printf ("%8d %s\n", id++, $0); } ' $1 i.e., always use single quotes to surround awk scripts, and include Shell variables (or `` substitutions) within '" and "' . >The 'awk' manual page talks about passing parameters via the command >line, but I've never been able to make it work and the source for >awk does not seem to attempt to obtain such parameters anyhow. Who knows? That feature is only available as of System V release 2. -- Jim Balter, INTERACTIVE Systems (ima!jim)