Question

Say with the below awk inside a bash script:

How can you get the print_line function to print the name of the argument passed in?
ie this output

array passed in was:
arrayprime
array passed in was:
arraymagic

Just a snippet of the gist of the code (not whole thing):

awk -F"$delim" '
NR>1 { 

        print_line(arrayprime)
        print_line(arraymagic)
}
    func print_line(arr)
    {
        print "array passed in was:"
            print arr
    }

} ' "$filename"

Answer 1

No, awk does not have the ability to be this introspective.

The C language can do this through the use of the C preprocessor. If you really want to roll this type of behavior into your awk function, then you could look into use the C preprocessor or perhaps write a GNU M4 macro

If you’re willing to add just one more parameter, you could do.

awk -F"$delim" '
NR>1 { 

        print_line(arrayprime, "arrayprime")
        print_line(arraymagic, "arraymagic")
}
    func print_line(arr, name)
    {
        print "array passed in was:"
            print name
    }

}' "$filename"