awk ‘FNR == 2 {print}’ issue

I have some task on which i need to know the install date of WLS which is located in second row of file called envVars.properties which is located in /opt/weblogic1221/wlserver_12.2.1/installation/install/envVars.properties. I have server which has multiple versions of WL there for I use * in /opt/weblogic*/wlserver*/.... But when I run cat /opt/weblogic*/wlserver*/installation/install/*.properties| awk 'FNR == 2 {print}' I get only 1 result (for the first file it finds).

See:

[root@server090 ~]# cat /opt/weblogic*/wlserver*/installation/install/*.properties| awk 'FNR==2{print}'
#Mon Feb 02 14:47:02 IST 2015

Without awk:

[root@server90 ~]# cat /opt/weblogic*/wlserver*/installation/install/*.properties
#Copyright (c) 1999, {0}, Oracle. All rights reserved.
#Mon Feb 02 14:47:02 IST 2015
JAVA_HOME_CCR=/usr/java/jdk1.7.0_72
#Copyright (c) 1999, 2016, Oracle. All rights reserved.
#Mon Feb 06 15:35:50 IST 2017
JAVA_HOME_CCR=/usr/java/jdk1.8.0_102

There are 2 files as you can see:

[root@server90 ~]# ll /opt/weblogic*/wlserver*/installation/install/*.properties
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 oracle dba 121 Feb  2  2015 /opt/weblogic1213/wlserver_12.1.3/installation/install/envVars.properties
-rwxrwxrwx. 1 oracle dba 123 Oct 20  2017 /opt/weblogic1221/wlserver_12.2.1/installation/install/envVars.properties

Answer

Don’t “cat through to awk”, just specify the files after the awk statement and so:

awk 'FNR == 2 {print}' /opt/weblogic*/wlserver*/installation/install/*.properties

Using cat is needless and it will merge all input files into one single output, so awk will just see one input file (FNR can only match once, then).