Question

I am trying to add last line to the file which I am creating. How is it possible to detect the last line of a file in awk before END ? I need to do this because the variables don’t work in the END block,
so I am trying to avoid using END.

awk ' { do some things..; add a new last line into file;}'

before END, I don’t want this:

awk 'END{print "something new" >> "newfile.txt"}'

Answer 1

One option is to use getline function to process the file. It returns 1 on sucess, 0 on end of file and -1 on an error.

awk '
    FNR == 1 {

        ## Process first line.
        print FNR ": " $0;

        while ( getline == 1 ) {
            ## Process from second to last line.
            print FNR ": " $0;
        }

        ## Here all lines have been processed.
        print "After last line";
    }
' infile

Assuming infile with this data:

one
two
three
four
five

Output will be:

1: one                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
2: two                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
3: three
4: four
5: five
After last line