I have Ubuntu 17.10 on two boxes. I ran this command on both of them...
echo 123456789 | awk '{printf("%'"'"'d\n", $1)}'
...and the awk command worked on one box but not on the other.
The path to awk, and to other *awk commands, is /usr/bin, but after that
it gets complicated. On the machine where it worked, I had installed
gawk. I used to think that a GNU/Linux installation would come with GNU
awk by default, but it doesn't. It comes with mawk instead. This is the
system of symlinks:
/usr/bin/awk -> /etc/alternatives/awk
/etc/alternatives/awk -> /usr/bin/mawk
/usr/bin/mawk
/usr/bin/nawk -> /etc/alternatives/nawk
/etc/alternatives/nawk -> /usr/bin/mawk
/usr/bin/mawk
So with the default Ubuntu, you have awk, mawk and nawk, but awk and nawk
are symlinks to mawk. So you really have only mawk. Why? I have no
idea. So next I install gawk and that changes things a bit. It adds the
gawk binary in /usr/bin, but it also changes the symlinks:
/usr/bin/awk -> /etc/alternatives/awk
/etc/alternatives/awk -> /usr/bin/gawk
/usr/bin/gawk
/usr/bin/nawk -> /etc/alternatives/nawk
/etc/alternatives/nawk -> /usr/bin/gawk
/usr/bin/gawk
/usr/bin/igawk
/usr/bin/mawk
So now I have awk, gawk, igawk, mawk and nawk, but while awk and nawk used
to link to mawk, now they link to gawk, so I really only have gawk, igawk
and mawk.
I guess it is explained here, but the thing that's missing is why
GNU/Linux doesn't come with GNU awk, forcing users to add it later...
https://askubuntu.com/questions/561621/choosing-awk-version-on-ubuntu-14-04
About the error:
When the awk command above worked (i.e., with gawk), I got this output...
123,456,789
...and when it didn't work (i.e., with mawk), I got this error:
awk: run time error: improper conversion(number 1) in printf("%'d
")
FILENAME="-" FNR=1 NR=1
Best,
Mike