> Try this (use \\\")
>
> gawk "BEGIN {print \"\\\"hello\\\"\"}"
> "hello"

HASTA LA VISTA ***BABY***
that was my silver bullet! i tried variants on what you wrote and
finally stumbled on the solution:

i did:
mawk "{print $1, \"\\\"\"}"

and it did:
"

YES! i'm not gonna waste my time trying to decipher the logic of it,
just thank the Lord that it works. and it only takes 8 characters to
specify that one character!

now i have one more problem though. i want to print a literal string
constant. it won't do it:

i do:
mawk "{print "word"}"

and it does:


.... nothing! no errors, but no output either. am i doin something wrong?

mike

BTW, i'm on 98se, mawk 1.22x