Output Separators (The GNU Awk User’s Guide)
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5.3 Output Separators
As mentioned previously, a print
statement contains a list of items separated by commas. In the output, the items are normally separated by single spaces. However, this doesn’t need to be the case; a single space is simply the default. Any string of characters may be used as the output field separator by setting the predefined variable OFS
. The initial value of this variable is the string " "
/@w (i.e., a single space).
The output from an entire print
statement is called an output record. Each print
statement outputs one output record, and then outputs a string called the output record separator (or ORS
). The initial value of ORS
is the string "\n"
(i.e., a newline character). Thus, each print
statement normally makes a separate line.
In order to change how output fields and records are separated, assign new values to the variables OFS
and ORS
. The usual place to do this is in the BEGIN
rule (see section The BEGIN and END Special Patterns), so that it happens before any input is processed. It can also be done with assignments on the command line, before the names of the input files, or using the -v
command-line option (see section Command-Line Options). The following example prints the first and second fields of each input record, separated by a semicolon, with a blank line added after each newline:
$ awk 'BEGIN { OFS = ";"; ORS = "\n\n" } > { print $1, $2 }' mail-list -| Amelia;555-5553 -| -| Anthony;555-3412 -| -| Becky;555-7685 -| -| Bill;555-1675 -| -| Broderick;555-0542 -| -| Camilla;555-2912 -| -| Fabius;555-1234 -| -| Julie;555-6699 -| -| Martin;555-6480 -| -| Samuel;555-3430 -| -| Jean-Paul;555-2127 -|
If the value of ORS
does not contain a newline, the program’s output runs together on a single line.
Next: OFMT, Previous: Print Examples, Up: Printing [Contents][Index]