accessing variable outside awk in linux - linux

Question

file= input.txt
br=0
awk -v 'BEGIN{FS=";"}
{
for(i=1;i<=NF;i++)
{
print $i
br = NF
}
}'<$file
print "value of br " $br
I am storing the value of NF in br, so that i can use it further in script. In my case the value of NF is 10. but in br I am receiving 0.

Answer 1

You are confusing shell scripts and awk, which are different programs/interpreters.
What happens in awk stays in awk.
The best you can do is print a string to the shell.
I note that I did not need the -v tag, and substituted the -F tag for setting FS.
In your case you might use the END directive in awk, which only runs at the the end.
file= input.txt
br=0
gawk -F; '
{
for(i=1;i<=NF;i++)
{
print $i
br = NF
}
}
END { print "final value of br:"br } '<$file
If you need this number in a shell environment variable called br, you could do it this way:
file= input.txt
br=$( gawk -F; '
{
for(i=1;i<=NF;i++)
{
br = NF
}
}
END { print br } '<$file
)
How It Works
In bash shell
VARNAME=$( command )
runs the command and sets the environment variable VARNAME to the output from running the command.
Important: Use source instead of executing to set variables from shell scripts
Note that if you stick this in br.sh and chmod 700 br.sd, you might be tempted to run it with ./br.sh which will run it, but it will set shell variable $br in the resulting temporary child process, not the calling parent. The parent will have $br empty in that case. To get $br set in the parent, you would have to run the command file with source br.sh not by executing it directly.