在AWK生成的命令字符串中嵌入引号？

Question

I need to match all instances of strings in one file, with a master list in another. However, if my string is abc I want only that, not abcdef , abc1234 and so on.

So, a word boundary for the regex? Right now, I'm using a simple awk one liner:

cat results_file| sort -k 1| awk -F" " '{ print $1" /home/owner/file_2_search"}'|
xargs -L 1 /bin/grep -i

However, to force a word boundary, I'd need to grep string\\b and the quotes (single or double) seem to be required.

In awk, \\b is a special character, you need \\\\b ... And the quoted quotes ... (arg) ... Or am I missing something and overdoing this?

This is a Linux box, so presumably gawk. I have gone over quoting rules for awk, and realize this has got to be simple (and not complex ... but), but am not seeing it.

Answer 1

Had meant to post as an answer, not a comment. Will try to pose a more readable question, but confess to having second thoughts about doing this as a one-liner in the first place -- may be best to follow an alternate method. Appreciate the willingness to help. --Joe