awk error with indice when used in a loop

Question

I have the follwing situation.

 awk '$0 != "Force for tool binder"   # print all lines until string found
 $0 =="Force for tool binder"{
 print ; getline ; print;            # go to 2 lines below the string
 getline; getline < " forceState$j.k "; print}' dynaFile_Offen1.k > tempDynaFile.k   # take the string from 
 #the file forceStates$j.k and replace in the main file, generating a temp file.

The problem is that here the j is a loop index, meaning that for the first case it is j=1. when I used it as forceStates1.k it works perfect but in the loop it is not taking the value.

I would be obliged for the suggestions.

Answer 1

$j in '... " forceState$j.k " ...' will not get expanded.
Is it a problem?

Answer 2

The $j looks to be a shell script variable. As your awk script is within a single quoted section the shell will not substitute variables within the awk script. So awk is seeing a literal $j. You need to change the shell quoting to permit substitution or probably more usefully pass it in on the command line eg:

awk -v loopctr=$j 'BEGIN {print loopctr}'

will print your loop counter each time as the value of j was passed in the awk variable loopctr here.