Hex compare in bash scripting - linux

Question

I am facing some issue when I am reading the 3rd word(a hex string) of each line in a text file and compare it with a hex number. Can some one please help me on it.
#!/bin/bash
A=$1
cat $A | while read a; do
a1=$(echo \""$a"\" | awk '{ print $3 }')
#echo $a > cut -d " " -f 3
echo $a1
(("$a1" == 0x10F7))
echo $?
done
But when I use below, the comparison happens correctly,
a1= 0xADCAFE
(( "$a1" == 0x10F7 ))
echo $?
Then why it is showing issue when I read like below,
a1=$(echo \""$a"\" | awk '{ print $3 }')
or> a1=$(echo $a | awk '{ print $3 }')
echo $a prints intended hex value, but comparison does not happen.
Regards,

Answer 1

Running Awk inside a while read loop is an antipattern. Just do the loop in Awk; it's good at that.
awk '$3 == 4343' "$1"
If you want to compare against a string whose value is "0x10F7" then it's
awk '$3 == "0x10F7"' "$1"
If you want to match either, case insensitively etc, a regex is a good way to do that.
awk '$3 ~ /^(0x10[Ff]7|4343)$/' "$1"
Notice how the $1 in double quotes is handled by the shell, and gets replaced by a (properly quoted!) copy of the script's first command-line argument before Awk runs, while the Awk script in single quotes has its own namespace, so $3 is an Awk variable which refers to the third field in the current input line.
Either way, avoid the useless use of cat and always always always quote variables which contain file names with double quotes.
That's literal double quotes. You seem to have tried both a dangerous bare $a and a doubly double-quoted "\"$a\"" where the simple "$a" would be what you actually want.

Answer 2

Thank you all for your responses, Now my script is working fine. I was trying to match two files, below script does the purpose
#!/bin/bash
A=$1
B=$2
dos2unix -f "$A"
dos2unix -f "$B"
rm search_match.txt search_data_match.txt search_nomatch.txt search_data_nomatch.txt
while read line;do
search_word=$(echo $line | awk '{ print $1 }')
grep "$search_word" $B >> temp_file.txt
while read var;do
file1_hex=$(echo $line | awk '{ print $2 }')
file2_hex=$(echo $var | awk '{ print $3 }')
(("$file1_hex" == "$file2_hex"))
zero=$(echo $?)
if [ "$zero" -eq 0 ] ; then
echo $line >> search_match.txt
echo $var >> search_data_match.txt
else
echo $line >> search_nomatch.txt
echo $var >> search_data_nomatch.txt
fi
done < "temp_file.txt"
rm temp_file.txt
done < "$A"