print whole variable contents if the number of lines are greater than N - awk

Question

How to print all lines if certain condition matches.
Example:
echo "$ip"
this is a sample line
another line
one more
last one
If this file has more than 3 lines then print the whole variable.
I am tried:
echo $ip| awk 'NR==4'
last one
echo $ip|awk 'NR>3{print}'
last one
echo $ip|awk 'NR==12{} {print}'
this is a sample line
another line
one more
last one
echo $ip| awk 'END{x=NR} x>4{print}'
Need to achieve this:
If this file has more than 3 lines then print the whole file. I can do this using wc and bash but need a one liner.

Answer 1

The right way to do this (no echo, no pipe, no loops, etc.):
$ awk -v ip="$ip" 'BEGIN{if (gsub(RS,"&",ip)>2) print ip}'
this is a sample line
another line
one more
last one

Answer 2

You can use Awk as follows,
echo "$ip" | awk '{a[$0]; next}END{ if (NR>3) { for(i in a) print i }}'
one more
another line
this is a sample line
last one
you can also make the value 3 configurable from an awk variable,
echo "$ip" | awk -v count=3 '{a[$0]; next}END{ if (NR>count) { for(i in a) print i }}'
The idea is to store the contents of the each line in {a[$0]; next} as each line is processed, by the time the END clause is reached, the NR variable will have the line count of the string/file you have. Print the lines if the condition matches i.e. number of lines greater than 3 or whatever configurable value using.
And always remember to double-quote the variables in bash to avoid undergoing word-splitting done by the shell.
Using James Brown's useful comment below to preserve the order of lines, do
echo "$ip" | awk -v count=3 '{a[NR]=$0; next}END{if(NR>3)for(i=1;i<=NR;i++)print a[i]}'
this is a sample line
another line
one more
last one

Answer 3

Another in awk. First test files:
$ cat 3
1
2
3
$ cat 4
1
2
3
4
Code:
$ awk 'NR<4{b=b (NR==1?"":ORS)$0;next} b{print b;b=""}1' 3 # look ma, no lines
[this line left intentionally blank. no wait!]
$ awk 'NR<4{b=b (NR==1?"":ORS)$0;next} b{print b;b=""}1' 4
1
2
3
4
Explained:
NR<4 { # for tghe first 3 records
b=b (NR==1?"":ORS) $0 # buffer them to b with ORS delimiter
next # proceed to next record
}
b { # if buffer has records, ie. NR>=4
print b # output buffer
b="" # and reset it
}1 # print all records after that