Set variable in current shell from awk

Question

Is there a way to set a variable in my current shell from within awk?

I'd like to do some processing on a file and print out some data; since I'll read the whole file through, I'd like to save the number of lines -- in this case, FNR.

Happens though I can't seem to find a way to set a shell variable with FNR value; if not this, I'd have to read the FNR from my output file, to set, say num_lines, with FNR value.

I've tried some combinations using awk 'END{system(...)}', but could not manage it to work. Any way around this?

Answer 1

Here's another way.

This is especially useful when when you've got the values of your variables in a single variable and you want split them up. For example, you have a list of values from a single row in a database that you want to create variables out of.

val="hello|beautiful|world" # assume this string comes from a database query read a b c <<< $( echo ${val} | awk -F"|" '{print $1" "$2" "$3}' )  echo $a #hello echo $b #beautiful echo $c #world 

We need the 'here string' i.e <<< in this case, because the read command does not read from a pipe and instead reads from stdin