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

Make awk print out the assignment statement:

MYVAR=NewValue

Then in your shell script, eval the output of your awk script:

eval $(awk ....)
# then use $MYVAR

EDIT: people recommend using declare instead of eval, to be slightly less error-prone if something other than the assignment is printed by the inner script. It's bash-only, but it's okay when the shell is bash and the script has #!/bin/bash, correctly stating this dependency.

The eval $(...) variant is widely used, with existing programs generating output suitable for eval but not for declare (lesspipe is an example); that's why it's important to understand it, and the bash-only variant is "too localized".