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(gawk.info)Long

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Running Long Programs
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   Sometimes your `awk' programs can be very long.  In this case, it is
more convenient to put the program into a separate file.  In order to
tell `awk' to use that file for its program, you type:

     awk -f SOURCE-FILE INPUT-FILE1 INPUT-FILE2 ...

   The `-f' instructs the `awk' utility to get the `awk' program from
the file SOURCE-FILE.  Any file name can be used for SOURCE-FILE.  For
example, you could put the program:

     BEGIN { print "Don't Panic!" }

into the file `advice'.  Then this command:

     awk -f advice

does the same thing as this one:

     awk "BEGIN { print \"Don't Panic!\" }"

This was explained earlier (*note Running `awk' Without Input Files:
Read Terminal.).  Note that you don't usually need single quotes around
the file name that you specify with `-f', because most file names don't
contain any of the shell's special characters.  Notice that in
`advice', the `awk' program did not have single quotes around it.  The
quotes are only needed for programs that are provided on the `awk'
command line.

   If you want to identify your `awk' program files clearly as such,
you can add the extension `.awk' to the file name.  This doesn't affect
the execution of the `awk' program but it does make "housekeeping"
easier.