capture last line of file as integer variable and use in awk command - awk

Question

I am trying to capture the last line of a file as a variable for use in an awk command.
Here is an example of the file (the end of it) :
cat file.txt
....
phylum:Chlorophyta 1
phylum:Mucoromycota 1
column 6:
superkingdom:Eukaryota 99
column 7:
99
I want to use that '99' as an integer in an awk command, saving it as a variable,
tail -n1 file.txt
99
e.g.
div=$(tail -n1 file.txt)
echo $div
99
To be used in a 2nd file (conf.txt), to divide the numbers in the 2nd field:
cat conf.txt
Class 88
Family 78
Genus 44
Species 23
BUT, when I try to use the $div variable in the awk command (using -v flag as suggested here and elsewhere with awk when taking a variable) I get this error:
awk -v a=$div '{print $2/a}' conf.txt
awk: can't open file {print $2/a}
source line number 1
But when saivng 99 as a variable simply on the cmd line, It works just fine:
num=99
awk -v a=$num '{print $2/a}' conf.txt
0.888889
0.787879
0.444444
0.232323
Are there extra spaces/characters in the capture from tail -1? I am missing something simple, but fundamental.
Ultimatey, I don't even want to have to save as a separate variable first If I dont have to, instead, just capture that last line number (99) and put directly into an awk cmd, e.g.:
awk '{print $2/[tail -1 file.txt]}' conf.txt
This is psuedo code (in the brackets) ...but, this would ultimately be what Id want...
Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

There's a space at the beginning of the last line, so the command is becoming
awk -v a= 99 '{print $2/a}' conf.txt
This is setting a to an empty string, treating 99 as the awk script, and the rest as filenames.
Remove the spaces from $div.
div=${div// /}

Answer 2

Use quotes as a habit in the shell.
Given:
cat file
blah blah
99
The command n=$(tail -n1 file) produces leading spaces in front of the 99:
n=$(tail -n1 file)
printf "\"%s\"\n" "$n"
" 99"
It is especially a bug that bites when you think you are checking the value of $n without quotes because the leading spaces are stripped by the shell prior to invoking echo.
Consider:
echo $n # no quotes - leading spaces stripped
99
echo "$n" # preserve whitespace...
99
Now if you try and pass that argument without quotes to awk, the space has meaning to the shell and screws up how the command is interpreted:
awk -v n=$n 'BEGIN{printf "\"%s\", %s\n", n, n+1}'
awk: fatal: cannot open file `BEGIN{printf "\"%s\", %s\n", n, n+1}' for reading: No such file or directory
vs:
awk -v n="$n" 'BEGIN{printf "\"%s\", %s\n", n, n+1}'
" 99", 100
If you want to use awk to replace the use of tail you use the idiom of FNR==NR to test if the file is the first file and $1==$1+0 to test if awk is interpreting what it sees as a number:
awk 'FNR==NR {n=$1+0==$1 ? $1+0 : n; next} # n ends up being the last number seen
$2==$2+0{print $2/n}
' file conf.txt
0.888889
0.787879
0.444444
0.232323

Answer 3

Rather than have shell call some command to get the last line of file.txt then save it in a shell variable, then set an awk variable to that same value populated from the shell variable and passing it to awk, just use one call to awk:
$ awk 'NR==FNR{n=$1; next} {print $2/n}' file.txt conf.txt
0.888889
0.787879
0.444444
0.232323

Answer 4

Enabling debug mode and running the awk command:
$ set -x
$ awk -v a=$div '{print $2/a}' conf.txt
+ awk -v a= 99 '{print $2/a}'
awk: fatal: cannot open file `{print $2/a}' for reading: No such file or directory
Of interest:
-v a= - define awk variable a as being empty
99 - awk code/script
'{print $2/a}' - first file passed to awk script, and the source of the error message
As others have pointed out you can get around the error by wrapping $div in double quotes:
$ awk -v a="$div" '{print $2/a}' conf.txt
+ awk -v 'a= 99' '{print $2/a}' conf.txt
0.888889
0.787879
0.444444
0.232323
Of interest:
-v '= 99' - define awk variable a and string ' 99'
in this case awk ignores the spaces when the rest of the variable can be interpreted as a numeric
'{print $2/a}' - awk code/script
conf.txt - file passed to awk script
Barmar and dawg have addressed stripping the blanks from div and using awk for the entire process, respectively.