title: Match in awk disregarding white space
body: <pre><code> 1 #!/bin/bash
   2 KEY_FILE="keys"
   3 TABLE_FILE="table" #pipe delimited data
   4 
   5 i=0;
   6 while read key #print out rows in table file with key in keys file
   7 do
   8   let i=i+1
   9   # key is first column in table
  10   # print status to stderr
  11   (echo "$KEY_FILE : line $i" &gt;&amp;2)
  12   awk -F '|' "\$1 == $key {print \$0}" $TABLE_FILE
  13 done &lt; $KEY_FILE
  14 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>From line 12, will awk match the first column against the key if there is a white space discrepancy?</p>