Awk consider double quoted string as one token and ignore space in between

Question

Data file - data.txt:

ABC \"I am ABC\" 35 DESC
DEF \"I am not ABC\" 42 DESC

cat data.txt | awk \'{print $2}\'

will re

Answer 1

I've scrunched up together a function that re-splits $0 into an array called B. Spaces between double quotes are not acting as field separators. Works with any number of fields, a mix of quoted and unquoted ones. Here goes:

#!/usr/bin/gawk -f

# Resplit $0 into array B. Spaces between double quotes are not separators.
# Single quotes not handled. No escaping of double quotes.
function resplit(       a, l, i, j, b, k, BNF) # all are local variables
{
  l=split($0, a, "\"")
  BNF=0
  delete B
  for (i=1;i<=l;++i)
  {
    if (i % 2)
    {
      k=split(a[i], b)
      for (j=1;j<=k;++j)
        B[++BNF] = b[j]
    }
    else
    {
      B[++BNF] = "\""a[i]"\""
    }
  }
}

{
  resplit()

  for (i=1;i<=length(B);++i)
    print i ": " B[i]
}

Hope it helps.