Replace 5th and 6th "word" in line of text file with bash variable

Question

This question expands upon my last question (Search for specific line of text file, replace up to a certain character). With help from user @anubhava I was able to search for the line starting with dataspecs, and transform it from

dataspecs v1 v2 v3 v4 v5 ! blah to

dataspecs $new_val ! blah

However, I now need to be able to keep the variables v1 v2 v3 (I don't know their actual values), and replace v4 and v5 with bash variables $new_v4 and $new_v5. So my new line will now look like this:

dataspecs v1 v2 v3 new_v4 new_v5 ! blah

Answer 1

awk -v n4="$new4" -v n5="$new5" '/^dataspecs/{$5=n4;$6=n5}7' file

Answer 2

Kent's solution is great. Here's another option that involves directly accessing shell variables from within awk

awk '/^dataspecs/{$5=ENVIRON["new_v4"];$6=ENVIRON["new_v5"];}{print}' file.txt > newfile.txt