awk: warning: escape sequence '\<' treated as plain '>'

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I‘m trying to match words using GNU awk command and getting the following error:

echo 'foo bar this that blah' | awk '{gsub("\<regex-word\>", "NEW-WORD");print}'

But getting the following warning on screen and it is not working:
awk: warning: escape sequence `\<' treated as plain `<' awk: warning: escape sequence `\>' treated as plain `>'

How do I fix this problem under Unix like operating systems?


You need escape the backslashes too:

{gsub("\\<regex-word\\>", "NEW-WORD");

In this example:

echo 'foo bar this that blah' | awk '{gsub("\\<regex-word\\>", "NEW-WORD");print}'

Posted by: Vivek Gite

The author is the creator of nixCraft and a seasoned sysadmin, DevOps engineer, and a trainer for the Linux operating system/Unix shell scripting. Get the latest tutorials on SysAdmin, Linux/Unix and open source topics via RSS/XML feed or weekly email newsletter.

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