On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 07:43:50AM -0800, giuseppe.amatu...@gmail.com wrote: > 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 > > ' _
You are trying to use '...' inside '...'. > 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? The traditional way (works in all Bourne-family shells) would be to close the outer '...', then use \', then re-open the '...'. In practice that looks like this: bash -c ' awk '\''{print $2}'\'' ... ' _ Another way, which only works in bash, would be to use the $'...' quoting syntax instead: bash -c $' awk \'{print $2}\' ... ' _ This really should have been asked on help-bash rather than bug-bash, by the way.