Printing a string value in awk results in error

Question

fatal: not enough arguments to satisfy format string
    `%s SPT=80'
     ^ ran out for this one

This my code

for ((h = 1 ; h < 4 ; h++ )); do 
    x=$(awk -v i=h -v j=17 'FNR == 2 {printf "%s " $j}' newiptables.log)
        echo $x

This is my file

Dec 26 09:17:51 localhost kernel: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:10:c6:a8:da:68:00:90:7f:9c:50:5a:08:00 SRC=198.252.206.16 DST=10.128.1.225 LEN=313 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=59334 PROTO=TCP SPT=80 DPT=56506 WINDOW=46535 RES=0x00 ACK PSH URGP=0 
Dec 26 09:17:52 localhost kernel: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:10:c6:a8:da:68:00:90:7f:9c:50:5a:08:00 SRC=198.252.206.16 DST=10.128.1.225 LEN=1440 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=47303 PROTO=TCP SPT=80 DPT=56506 WINDOW=46535 RES=0x00 ACK URGP=0 
Dec 26 09:17:52 localhost kernel: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:10:c6:a8:da:68:00:90:7f:9c:50:5a:08:00 SRC=198.252.206.16 DST=10.128.1.225 LEN=1440 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=47559 PROTO=TCP SPT=80 DPT=56506 WINDOW=46535 RES=0x00 ACK URGP=0

Closely related questions: [SO 20742474](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20742474), [SO 20780315](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20780315), [SO 20780890](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20780890), [SO 20781258](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20781258). Not quite duplicates, but the same data stream. — Jonathan Leffler, Dec 27 '13 at 15:01

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 26 '13 at 06:41

The problem is a missing comma in the printf command for awk:

awk -v i=h -v j=17 'FNR == 2 {printf "%s ", $j}' newiptables.log
                                          ^
                                          |== This is needed

Quoting from the manual:

A simple printf statement looks like this:
 printf format, item1, item2, ...

Printing a string value in awk results in error

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