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I have a csv that I want to add a preceding column to and a trailing column. The trailing column is a date (manual string right now). Every time I try to get that date, it ends up replacing some text at the front of the read in data (print $0).

How can I add that info?

Sample data from stdin

UNDEFINED,1089,19.3,-0.1

awk 

awk -F, '{ printf ", %, %s\n", $0,"12\/15\/2012"}'

results

, 12/15/2012 1089, 19.3, -0.1

desired results

,UNDEFINED,1089,19.3,-0.1,12/15/2012

I've even tried separating the fields into individual columns, same result. Tried triple double-quotes around the date, same results (maybe an error i can't remember). What am I doing wrong with that date?

share|improve this question
Works here if you add another %s to the format specification. – Thor Feb 16 at 21:40
Yeah, here with gnu awk 4.0.1 your original awk command with a %s in place of the lone % works.: awk -F, '{printf ",%s, %s \n", $0, "SOME_DATE"}' – SuperMagic Feb 16 at 21:46
I suspect that's what you meant to type. In any event, I also can't reproduce your indicated results even with the presumed typo.... – SuperMagic Feb 16 at 21:49
ok, thanks for the tip! from my examples, I can't get it to fail either. must be something in the stdin. "cat "ls -t | head -1" | tail -n+9 | awk ..." which i can rework now that i started to use awk. – greenwar Feb 16 at 21:54

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