Awk while loop question

[intell2003]

Hello, new to the site and I'm looking for help. I'm doing an Awk tutorial to try and get used to it for recreative use. I found a tutorial that I have been going through until I came across this one particular problem.

Write an awk program to print out the total number of computers held by the organization using the data file awktext3. Use a while statement to perform this.
The awktext3 file stated above contains the following information:

Management 22 Electronics 46 Engineering 12
Health_Science 5 Tourism 20 Registry 18
Computing_Centre 300 Library 4 Halls 2

 

[Annihilannic]

Let's see your code so far... which part are you stuck with?

(There's no point in doing a tutorial if we just give you the solution )

Annihilannic.

 

[intell2003]

I have tried a few things for this problem, the latest being:
{ field = $2
while ( field <= NF )
{
tot += field;
field += 2
}}
END { printf("$d\n", tot) }

It is printing out $d for output. I have tried other scripts but have overwritten them with current attempt. Apologies for not putting this down in the first post, I meant to. Also, thank you for your response and possible future help.

 

[Annihilannic]

Good start... $2 refers to the contents of field 2, not the number 2. So you want to use just 2 initially.

Then when you add to the total, you are interested in the contents, so you should change that one to $2.

Finally, printf() format specifiers are prefixed by % symbols, not $.

Annihilannic.

 

[Annihilannic]

Sorry, typo, that should read:

Then when you add to the total, you are interested in the contents, so you should change that one to $field.


Annihilannic.

 

[intell2003]

Thank you very much for the help. Some of the suggestions you gave made me want to smack myself in the head because I overlooked them. Thank you again for the help.