What is wrong with this very simple awk command? I just want to substract the 2nd column from the first, I did awk "{ print $1-$2; }" I get a syntax error. For information, input is piped in from another process.

Since you’re using double quotes, the shell interprets `$1` and `$2`, replacing them with the first two arguments in the current context (so probably the empty string in both cases, given the error you’re getting). You should use single quotes:


awk '{ print $1-$2; }'