Using awk with NSTask

Question

How would I use this awk command:

awk 'NR>1{print $1}' string-to-modify

with NSTask? I already tried setting /usr/bin/awk as the launch path, 'NR>1{print $1}' as an argument, then the string to modify as another argument but all I get is this:

/usr/bin/awk: syntax error at source line 1 context is

' <<< /usr/bin/awk: bailing out at source line 1

Any help would be appreciated :)

Answer 1

What are you trying to achieve? You shouldn't need to launch awk to perform string manipulation.

If you're trying to remove lines from a string, try using something like NSString's getLineStart:end:contentsEnd:forRange: method.

Answer 2

First, remove single quotes: NSTask doesn't invoque a shell which could interpret them. This is the cause of the error you get.

Second, awk takes a filename as last argument, not a string. If you really need NSTask and awk, the shell command would be echo string | awk ..., which would involve two NSTask and a NSPipe.

Finally, for string manupulation, use NSString instead, as mentioned by dreamlax.