In gawk gensub prints only one backslash

Question

Here under, I expected two back slashes, but get one,

$ awk '{$0=gensub(/\[/,"\\\\","g")}1' <(echo [)
\

sub works okay.

Thanks,

Eric J.

Answer 1

The behavior is explained here: http://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.html#Gory-Details

From that link it can be seen that the there is a difference in behavior depending upon

• which version of awk you are using, and
• if you use gensub() or sub()