Question

I want to pass a 2D array as an argument to the function in awk . I tried this

add(element1,element2,array) -> this "array" could be bigArray,smallArray etc

function add(element1,element2,array)
{
      if(!(element1 SUBSEP element2 in array))
      {
            array[element1,element2]
      }

}

The array in the add function keeps on changing . But I am getting an error stating that “attempt to use scalar parameter array as an array”. But the same thing when I pass a 1D array it works. Could you ppl please help me regarding this

Answer 1

As commented just now, tested it with following script:

Content of script.awk:

BEGIN {
    a["one", "two"] = 1;

    el1 = "one";
    el2 = "two";
    add( el1, el2, a );

    el1 = "one";
    el2 = "three";
    add( el1, el2, a );

    print "length of array: " length( a );
}

function add(element1,element2,array)
{
      if(!(element1 SUBSEP element2 in array))
      {
            printf "Elem1 -> %s\t\tElem2 ->%s\n", element1, element2
            array[element1,element2] = 2;
      }
}

Run it like:

awk -f script.awk

With following output:

Elem1 -> one            Elem2 ->three
length of array: 2