Question

Data:

Sandnes<space>gecom<tab>Hansen<tab>Ola<space>Timoteivn<space>10

I am substituting a specific column (ex:2th column) value with a variable in a file. So I am using the command:

varz="zipval"
awk -v  VAR=$varz '{$2=VAR}1' OutputFile.log

The awk substitute all the tabs to space after processing. So I have used OFS=”\t” .

But it removes every space to tabs
Sandnes<tab>gecom<tab>Hansen<tab>zipval<tab>Timoteivn<tab>10

How to handle it.
Thanks

Answer 1

Use this script to pass column no to your awk script:

varz="zipval"
awk -v VAR=$varz -v N=6 '{sub($N, VAR)}1' OutputFile.log