Question

How can I remove a space located between name and lastname from a string by using awk?
most of the examples are about redirecting data from command line to awk but I need to manipulate a string inside an awk script.

Convert this:

"steve john"

to:

"stevejohn"

I have a string variable which I asked user to input inside an awk script. I need to remove the spaces.

Answer 1

gsub is your friend. The following command basically does a global substitution of a regular expression (a single space in this case), replacing it with an empty string, on the target $0 (the whole line).

pax> echo "steve john" | awk '{ gsub (" ", "", $0); print}'
stevejohn

You can use any target, including one input by a user:

pax> awk 'BEGIN {getline xyzzy ; gsub(" ","", xyzzy) ; print xyzzy}'
hello there my name is pax
hellotheremynameispax