awk - Unexpected outcome from awk when there is multiple delimiter
For example, $ echo "tom+|dick+|and+|harry" | awk -F '+|' '{print $2}' |dick or $ echo "tom | dick | and | harry" | awk -F ' | ' '{print $2}' | In the above example, one may expect the output as dick. However, both awk output seems unexpected. The reason is - awk -F (as least more recent version of Linux) perform regex. The above + mean matches character before + one or more times | mean OR operator as a result, above output is given due to regex matching. If you want to literal matching of the delimiter, you need to escape the regex operator with \\ $ echo "tom+|dick+|and+|harry" | awk -F '\\+\\|' '{print $2}' dick or $ echo "tom | dick | and | harry" | awk -F ' \\| ' '{print $2}' dick Reference https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/r/regex.htm
