Hi, have this a for loop which is sending the "dir" variable one for each processor.
for dir in UA_tile_tif_pop_txt UA_buf10_tile_tif_pop_txt UA_buf20_tile_tif_pop_txt UA_buf30_tile_tif_pop_txt UA_buf40_tile_tif_pop_txt UA_buf50_tile_tif_pop_txt ; do echo $dir ; done | xargs -n 1 -P 6 bash -c ' IN_UA=/weldgfs/p51/gius_urban/pop_urban/buffer_tif dir="$1" join -1 2 -2 1 $IN_UA/$dir/UA_block_sum_s.txt $IN_UA/$dir/UA_popD_all.txt > $IN_UA/$dir/UA_block_sum_popD.txt join -1 2 -2 1 $IN_UA/$dir/UA_block_sum_popD.txt $IN_UA/$dir/UA_hunitD_all.txt > $IN_UA/$dir/UA_block_sum_popD_hunitD.txt ' _ The loop works fine, no issues. When i'm insert an awk command in the -c ' ' _ I get an error. e.g. for dir in UA_tile_tif_pop_txt UA_buf10_tile_tif_pop_txt UA_buf20_tile_tif_pop_txt UA_buf30_tile_tif_pop_txt UA_buf40_tile_tif_pop_txt UA_buf50_tile_tif_pop_txt ; do echo $dir ; done | xargs -n 1 -P 6 bash -c ' IN_UA=/weldgfs/p51/gius_urban/pop_urban/buffer_tif dir="$1" awk '{ print $2 }' $IN_UA/$dir/UA_block_sum_s.txt > $IN_UA/$dir/test.txt ' _ awk: cmd. line:1: { awk: cmd. line:1: ^ unexpected newline or end of string I try to escape with the \ the ' and the } but no good results. any idea how how i can insert awk function in xargs bash -c ' '_ syntax? I would like to avoid to create an external script and called it by xargs bash myscript.sh thanks in advance Giuseppe