Question

I need to process the output of a single record psql query through awk before assigning it to a value in my expect script.

The relevant code:

spawn $env(SHELL)
send "psql -U safeuser -h db test -c \"SELECT foo((SELECT id FROM table where ((table.col1 = \'$user\' AND table.col2 IS NULL) OR table.col2 = \'$user\') AND is_active LIMIT 1));\" | /bin/awk {{NR=3}} {{ print $1 }}; \r"
expect "assword for user safeuser:"
send "$safeuserpw\r"
expect -re '*'
set userpass $expect_out(0, string)

When I run the script, I get:

spawn /bin/bash
can’t read “1”: no such variable
“send “psql -U safeuser -h db test -c \”SELECT foo((SELECT id FROM table where ((table.col1 = \’$user\’ AND table.col2…”

Is there something glaring that I’m missing here? I was under the impression that the double curly-brackets protected the awk code block.

Answer 1

The awk script will show all lines because you’re using ‘=’ instead of ‘==’ in the conditional expression. Try the following:

spawn $env(SHELL)
send "psql -U safeuser -h db test -c \"SELECT foo((SELECT id FROM table where ((table.col1 = \'$user\' AND table.col2 IS NULL) OR table.col2 = \'$user\') AND is_active LIMIT 1));\" | /bin/awk \'NR==3 { print $1 }\'; \r"
expect "assword for user safeuser:"
send "$safeuserpw\r"
expect -re '*'
set userpass $expect_out(0, string)