Terminal backslash input repeated in output

command linezsh

I'm using zsh on a MacBook Pro, OS X 10.10. When I type in certain commands, such as this one:

cat myfile | awk -F $'\t' '{print $8, $9}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -k1,1n | awk '{if ($1 > 50) sum += $1} END {print sum}'

, then part of the command is repeated before the actual output of the command. The output in this case looks like:

    " '{print $8, $9}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -k1,1n | awk '{if ($1 > 50) sum += $1} END {print sum}' : myusername2525

Does anybody know how to get of the jumbled output? It kind of looks like a format string vulnerability or something similar to me.

Best Answer

The problem is the $ in the first awk statement in the chain:

awk -F $'\t' '{print $8, $9}'

The -F option for awk sets the record separator for your input. If you're really expecting the separator to be a dollar sign followed by a tab character you should move the dollar sign in to the single quotes like so:

awk -F '$\t' '{print $8, $9}'

Leaving the $ outside the single quotes means it's being interpreted by the shell as a variable reference. This is what's leading to your weird output. If you aren't expecting a dollar sign in the field separator, only a tab, change the awk call to:

awk -F '\t' '{print $8, $9}'

Based on what you've said, the above appears to be what you want.

Related Solutions

Bash shell script to locate and remove substring within a filename

ls | perl -nl -e '/(.*)(S[0-9]+E[0-9]+).*(\.mp4)/ && print "mv \"" . $_ . "\" \"". $1 . $2 . $3 . "\""'

How does this work? First ls outputs the list of files, one per line, like so:

The.Big.Bang.Theory.S01E01.xxxxxxxx.mp4
The.Big.Bang.Theory.S01E02.somecrap.mp4
The.Big.Bang.Theory.S04E12.otherjunk.mp4

Then perl -nl splits this into lines, feeding each to the regex, much like awk*. The regex captures 3 groups (denoted by parentheses), first the bit before SxxEyy, then that, then the file suffix. It then simply assembles a mv command suitable for renaming the files, like so:

mv "The.Big.Bang.Theory.S01E01.xxxxxxxx.mp4" "The.Big.Bang.Theory.S01E01.mp4"
mv "The.Big.Bang.Theory.S01E02.somecrap.mp4" "The.Big.Bang.Theory.S01E02.mp4"
mv "The.Big.Bang.Theory.S04E12.otherjunk.mp4" "The.Big.Bang.Theory.S04E12.mp4"

This can then be inspected and once you're satisfied it does what you want, piped into a shell by appending: | sh.

*awk would normally be a good tool to use for this, but sadly only GNU awk supports regex capture groups and Mac OS X doesn't include gawk by default.

MacOS – Can’t seem to redirect input in Terminal

Far less can go wrong if you pipe the input:

cat words.5.txt | /path/to/redirect

In your case, ./program might be needed depending on where you are compiling things or omitting the path entirely. From your edit this should work too:

./redirect < words.5.txt

That bash error is due to the program not existing in $PATH

echo $PATH

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Bash shell script to locate and remove substring within a filename

MacOS – Can’t seem to redirect input in Terminal

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