setting the output field separator in awk

Question

I\'n trying this statement in my awk script (in a file containing separate code, so not inline), script name: print-table.awk

BEGIN {FS = \"\\t\";OFS = \",\"         


        

Answer 1

You need to alter one of the field in awk:

awk 'BEGIN {FS="\t";OFS=","; print "about to open the file"} {$1=$1}1' file

Answer 2

You need to convince awk that something has changed to get it to reformat $0 using your OFS. The following works though there may be a more idiomatic way to do it.

BEGIN {FS = "\t";OFS = "," ; print "about to open the file"}
{$1=$1}1
END {print "about to close stream" }