How to get system output in awk?

Question

I want to save printf output to an array, as shown below:

op[i] = system( "printf \"%d\\n\" \"" SQ substr($1,i,1) "\"" )

but when I call them back, are they just 0 ?!

Do you know why!

+3

khikho Apr 23 '12 at 13:01

1 answer

glenn jackman · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-23T13:20:07+0000

Do you want to

op[i] = sprintf("%d\n", SQ substr($1,i,1))

The way to capture output from an external command:

cmd = "date"
cmd | getline output
close(cmd)