Changing a field value conditionally using awk

Question

I have a below values in file.

user1 India GJ 1000 IT contractor
user2 Ind GJ 1001 HR contractor
user3 USA CA 1002 R&D hourly
user4 India TN 1003 R&D fte
user5 Ind KA 1004 FE fte
user6 In GJ 2345 HR hourly

Need to match 3rd column and update 2nd column. I am able to do using below command.

awk -i inplace '/GJ|TN|KA/ {$2="IN"} {print}' filename

output for above command is

user1 IN GJ 1000 IT contractor
user2 IN GJ 1001 HR contractor
user3 USA CA 1002 R&D hourly
user4 IN TN 1003 R&D fte
user1 IN GJ 1000 IT contractor
user5 IN KA 1004 FE fte
user6 IN GJ 2345 HR hourly

But the same does not work when I run over ssh

ssh -q server1 "awk -i inplace '/GJ|TN|KA/ {\$2="IN"} {print}" filename

The output over SSH

user1  GJ 1000 IT contractor
user2  GJ 1001 HR contractor
user3 USA CA 1002 R&D hourly
user4  TN 1003 R&D fte
user1  GJ 1000 IT contractor
user5  KA 1004 FE fte
user6  GJ 2345 HR hourly

not sure what I am missing and why its not working our SSH. I am open for any other solutions.

Thanks.

Answer 1

What happened

Your command

ssh -q server1 "awk -i inplace '/GJ|TN|KA/ {\$2="IN"} {print}'" filename

^{(note I added the missing '; without it awk would not run at all)}

does not do what you want because the local shell removes all the double-quotes. Look:

          ssh -q server1 "awk -i inplace '/GJ|TN|KA/ {\$2="IN"} {print}'" filename
quoted:                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^    ^^^^^^^^^^
unquoted: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^                                  ^^            ^^^^^^^^^

In effect ssh gets awk -i inplace '/GJ|TN|KA/ {$2=IN} {print}' and filename (as separate arguments). It builds the following command to run on the remote side:

awk -i inplace '/GJ|TN|KA/ {$2=IN} {print}' filename

This means awk executes

/GJ|TN|KA/ {$2=IN} {print}

where IN is not considered to be a string, it's a variable in awk. The variable is empty.

---

Solution

To make the "inner" double-quotes survive and get to the remote shell (and to awk eventually), escape them just like you did with $:

ssh -q server1 "awk -i inplace '/GJ|TN|KA/ {\$2=\"IN\"} {print}'" filename

---

More information:

• How to execute complex command line over ssh? Your command is not very complex, still my answer to the linked question may help because it explains how ssh runs commands in general and how to deal with some possible problems.

• You had a command you wanted to provide to ssh without any local expansion. This is exactly the case the following question is designed to help with: How to single-quote or escape the whole command line in Bash conveniently?