Shell commands can also be instantiated in the report form, and their output will be printed on the report. and they can use column data as arguments.

<column name>

angle brackets (< >) indicate that data from the column of the current row of the input is to be inserted in place of the name.

<!command!>

angle brackets and exclamation points indicate that the command is to be executed by the shell. Any output from command appears in its place in the report.

<!command <column name>!>

This is an insert within a command. The data from the table replaces <column name> and then command is executed. Each row of the table provides command new string on which to operate.

regular text

Any characters that don't match the symbols above are printed as is.

If a column name is not recognized, <column name> is treated as normal text. This allows the use of angle brackets in the form: as long as the words between them do not match a column name, they will not be replaced.

If the data from the table is not replacing <column name>, then column name does not exactly match the column name in the table. Check for spelling errors, upper and lower case discrepancies, embedded blanks, and nonprinting characters.

$ justify < eats
Last    First   Dive            City
------  ------- --------------- ---------
Tong    Francis Szechwan Heaven St. Cloud
Moreno  Esteban Tacos Morenos   Gilroy

$ cat eats.bid
<First> <Last>
<! padstring -50 '<Dive> of <City>' !> <! date +%m/%d/%y !>
Dear Chef <Last>:
     We would like you to cater our Labor Day Picnic, where we
expect to feed 4 adults, 8 kids, 7 cats, 2 horses and a plethora
of ants, fleas and gnats.   We are also soliciting a bid from
<! prompt `row 'Dive != "<Dive>"' < eats | column Dive | headoff` !>.

$ report eats.bid < eats
Francis Tong
Szechwan Heaven of St. Cloud                       09/01/92

Dear Chef Tong:
     We would like you to cater our Labor Day Picnic, where we
expect to feed 4 adults, 8 kids, 7 cats, 2 horses and a plethora
of ants, fleas and gnats.   We are also soliciting a bid from
Tacos Morenos.

Esteban Moreno
Tacos Morenos of Gilroy                            09/01/92

Dear Chef Moreno:
     We would like you to cater our Labor Day Picnic, where we
expect to feed 4 adults, 8 kids, 7 cats, 2 horses and a plethora
of ants, fleas and gnats.   We are also soliciting a bid from
Szechwan Heaven.

This example illustrates the three types of inserts: column name, command, and command insert. The prompt command is used to suppress the extra newline returned by the shell.