Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site ecr2.UUCP Path: utzoo!hcrvax!ecrhub!ecr2!ted From: ted@ecr2.UUCP (Ted Richards) Newsgroups: net.unix Subject: Re: AWK question Message-ID: <140@ecr2.UUCP> Date: Thu, 8-Aug-85 12:15:43 EDT Article-I.D.: ecr2.140 Posted: Thu Aug 8 12:15:43 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 10-Aug-85 01:19:53 EDT References: <436@brl-tgr.ARPA> Organization: Emerald City Research Inc., Toronto Lines: 10 The problem with the statement awk '$5 >= $dt' ... is that the "$dt" is inside single quotes and gets passed literally to awk. What you want is for the shell to expand the "$dt" (but not the "$5"!). Try something like: echo '$5 >=' $dt >/tmp/whatever awk -f /tmp/whatever ...