awk: line 1: syntax error at or near >

Question

I'm getting this above syntax error and i can't decipher what is wrong with it. I'm trying to do a float value in BASH.

Hence i used this command called the awk to achieve the target.

while $empty; do
    empty=false
    echo -n "Price : "; read getPrice

#float value using awk
awk 'BEGIN{if ('$getPrice'>'0') exit 1}'
    if [ $? -eq 1 ]; then
    PRICE[$COUNT]=$getPrice;

else
    empty=true 
    echo "Please put in the correct price figure!"
fi

done

However, i got this error

awk: line 1: syntax error at or near >

This error occured when i did not input any value into the getPrice variable. However, it's working fine when i input some value which is >0. After much deliberation, i still could not figure what is wrong with the syntax. Regards.

Answer 1

The reason you get a syntax error in your Awk script is because when $getPrice is empty, then the script is actually just

BEGIN{if (>0) exit 1}

The proper way to import a shell variable into an Awk script as an Awk variable is by using -v:

awk -vprice="$getPrice" 'BEGIN { if (price > 0) exit 1 }'

I also had a look at the flow of contol in your script, and rather than using the $empty variable, you could just exit the loop when a correct price has been entered:

while true; do
    read -p 'Price : ' getPrice

    # compare float value using awk
    if awk -vprice="$getPrice" 'BEGIN { if (price <= 0) exit(1) }'
    then
      PRICE[$COUNT]="$getPrice"
      break
    fi

    echo 'Please put in the correct (positive) price figure!' >&2
done

Additional detail after comments:

The user should be alerted about invalid input if the value entered is not a number or if it's negative. We can test the inputted value for characters that are not supposed to be there (anything other than the digits 0 through to 9 and the decimal point):

while true; do
    read -p 'Price : ' getPrice

    if [[ ! "$getPrice" =~ [^0-9.] ]] && \
        awk -vprice="$getPrice" 'BEGIN { if (price <= 0) exit(1) }'
    then
        PRICE[$COUNT]="$getPrice"
        break
    fi

    echo 'Please put in the correct (positive) price figure!' >&2
done

Answer 2

If $getPrice is empty, this line

awk 'BEGIN{if ('$getPrice'>'0') exit 1}'

becomes

awk 'BEGIN{if (>0) exit 1}'

which is probably not what you intended. You could use one of the shell substitutions to provide a non-empty value (though mixing shell and awk like this still is not recommended practice):

awk 'BEGIN{if ('${getPrice:-0}'>'0') exit 1}'

It's better to pass variables to awk using the -v option (but that's actually a different question, answered several times).

Answer 3

If there is nothing in getPrice then the awk code is

BEGIN{if (>0) exit 1}

which is totally invalid syntax. Guard against getPrice being empty (or better yet check that it appears to be a number of some sort).

Is bash actually a requirement? This would be easier in ZSH or really any language with floating point support:

bash-3.2$ exec zsh
% echo 3.14 | read x; [[ $x -gt 0 ]] && echo positive
positive
% exec tclsh
tclsh> set x [read stdin]
3.14
3.14

tclsh> if {$x > 0} { puts positive }
positive
tclsh>