How do I escape a field variable in an awk command in an alias?

Question

Here are the contents of a file:

one two three
four five six

And here is my alias

alias testawk "awk '{print $2}' file"

This is what I get:

> testawk
one two three
four five six

But when I give this command, then I get what I want:

> awk '{print $2}' file
two
five

How do I escape the field specifier in the alias? NOTE: I'm using csh

Here is an explanation on dealing with csh meta-chars http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Csh.html#uh-7 — Dr. belisarius, Jun 24 '10 at 14:04

Louis Marascio · Accepted Answer · 2010-06-24T14:03:52.350

18

Wrap the alias w/ ' and use '\'' for the embedded '.

alias testawk 'awk '\''{print $2}'\'' file'

edited Jun 24 '10 at 14:03

answered Jun 24 '10 at 13:58

Louis Marascio

I didn't see that you were using csh first. This corrected answer should work for you. – Louis Marascio Jun 24 '10 at 14:04
Thanks. I hate all those little quirks of csh. Its too bad I'm forced to use it here at my work. – B Johnson Jun 25 '10 at 16:07

1 Answers1