awk

[Hal Moroff]

	I'm trying to use awk to read an ascii file, and translate only
certain fields.  I have my own special filter that will be used for the
translation.
	I can get awk to read my input file and extract the desired fields.
I can also get it to invoke my filter passing those fields, however I cannot
get the filter return value assigned to a variable in my awk program.
	My hands are slightly tied in that I cannot modify the way the
filter works.
	An awk code fragment follows:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#
#	awk script to filter selected fields
#
#

BEGIN	{ }

/.*/ {
#	the following statement works whether I use 'cat' or my own filter
	    print ">> " $1  | "cat"

#	however I wish to retrieve the string output by my filter into
#	a variable for further processing by 'awk'.  I've tried:
#	    print ">> " $1  | "cat" | getline

#	and also:
#	    print ">> " $1  | "cat" | getline str

#	and both return the same error:
#awk: syntax error near line 14
#awk: illegal statement near line 14
	}

END	{ }

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	Sorry if this distribution is too wide/narrow.  I've read notes
a long time, and posted rarely.
	Reply by email here or to cognex!hal at ai.mit.edu
	Thanx.
					- hal