Awk does not work as expected with double quotes

RustyRazorblade Consulting

March 22, 2007 1 min read

Of course, I felt like an idiot after being completely confused by this for about half an hour.

Consider this: awk "{print $1}" somefile.txt

This does not work as I had expected. The reason is because the $1 is evaluated within double quotes, (not single quotes). Yes, it’s a rookie mistake, but I never claimed to be the awk master.

So, always write:

awk '{print $1}' somefile.txt

and you will avoid a headache.

Of course, I felt like an idiot after being completely confused by this for about half an hour.

Consider this: awk "{print $1}" somefile.txt

This does not work as I had expected. The reason is because the $1 is evaluated within double quotes, (not single quotes). Yes, it’s a rookie mistake, but I never claimed to be the awk master.

So, always write:

awk '{print $1}' somefile.txt

and you will avoid a headache.