Set variable in current shell from awk

Question

Is there a way to set a variable in my current shell from within awk?

I\'d like to do some processing on a file and print out some data; since I\'ll rea

Answer 1

You can't export variables from a subshell to its parent shell. You have some other choices, though, including:

1. Make another pass of the file using AWK to count records, and use command substitution to capture the result. For example:

   FNR=$(awk 'END {print FNR}' filename)
   

2. Print FNR in the subshell, and parse the output in your other process.
3. If FNR is the same as number of lines, you can call wc -l < filename to get your count.