shell command on awk variable -- help 1

[Kipnep70]

My awk script:

bpimagelist -l -d 12/12/2007 -M uhilhr03 | grep ^IMAGE | awk 'BEGIN {OFS=":"}{print $2, $11, $20, $19}'

I would like to take variable $19 and run the following shell command on it:

bpdbm -ctime $19

Then plug that ouput back into my awk program and get the results ... is this possible?

 

[macd68]

gnu awk allows this type of operation fairly elegantly through getline and any awk that has a system function can be made to exec external programs with internal variables as arguments.

 

[Kipnep70]

macd68,

So after having executing an external program using the system function targeting an internal variables; can I redirect that system function's output to overwrite the same internal variable?

 

[macd68]

No. You can use getline with a compliant awk.

  if (cond) {
          cmd | getline var
          $FLD = var
  }
  print
}

 

[LXGoldie]

From one Netbackup admin to another, I think you might be going about this the wrong way...

bpimagelist, at least on my version of it, doesn't have a variable at $19 that you can convert properly using the -ctime option of bpdbm...at $19, it's Kilobytes. What you most likely want is either $14 or $16, and there is a simple command in Gnu Awk to format that into a value you want...

bpimagelist -l -d 12/12/2007 -M MASTERSERVER | grep ^IMAGE | awk 'BEGIN {OFS=":"}{print $2, $11, $20, strftime("%c",$19)}'

There are some detailed man pages for strftime that will let you format it into the way you want to see it.

 

[macd68]

bpimagelist -l -d 12/12/2007 -M MASTERSERVER | awk 'BEGIN {OFS=":"} /^IMAGE/ {print $2, $11, $20, strftime("%c",$19)}'

UUOG atrocity deleted.