accessing shell variables from within awk?

[Chuck Karish]

In article <473 at diamond.unix.ETA.COM> rscott at eta.unix.ETA.COM (Rich Scott)
writes:
>	How can I access a shell variable (to wit, a few environment
>variables) from within "awk"?

The awk command is usually written inside single quotes.  Use more
quotes to expose the shell variables you need.  The following program will
print a user's name and user ID number:

USRNAME="fred"
export USRNAME

awk -F':' '$1 ~ /'$USRNAME'/{print $1, $3}' /etc/passwd

Chuck Karish    ARPA:   karish at denali.stanford.edu
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