getline
This command is used in several different ways, and should not be
used by beginners. It is covered here because this is the chapter on input.
The examples that follow the explanation of the getline command
include material that has not been covered yet. Therefore, come back
and study the getline command after you have reviewed the
rest of this book and have a good knowledge of how awk works.
getline returns one if it finds a record, and zero if the end of the
file is encountered. If there is some error in getting a record, such
as a file that cannot be opened, then getline returns -1.
In this case, gawk sets the variable ERRNO to a string
describing the error that occurred.
In the following examples, command stands for a string value that represents a shell command.
Go to the first, previous, next, last section, table of contents.