change date format and store in variable using awk

Question

I have date in format YYYY-MM-DD in variable 'a'. I want to convert it in format YYYYMMDD and store in variable 'b'. The variable is in an awk variable.

How can I do the same ?

Answer 1

Use gsub:

a="YYYY-MM-DD"
b=a
gsub("-", "", b)
print(b)

will output:

YYYYMMDD

gsub replaces the first argument with the second in the third, in-place, so we copy the value of a into b first. We replace the - characters with nothing.