awk syntax help needed

["Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom" <carls@agritech.com>]

        I need to know how to use the system() function in awk.
I need to take a list of filenames (with no extension), and move files with
those names (but varying extensions, which i will specify in the script),
from one directory to another. the manuals are remarkably unhelpful in this
case...

here's the line in question:
system(cp /from/this/dir/$1.ext /home/here/ )

and here's the error it gives:
awk: copy.awk:7: system(cp /from/this/dir/$1.ext /home/here/ )
awk: copy.awk:7:                                            ^ parse error
awk: copy.awk:7: fatal: system() cannot have 0 arguments                

why does it give me a parse error on that command? I've tried just the bare
command on the command line, and it works fine.

Carl Soderstrom

p.s. I know that Perl will do the job too.. but I know neither awk nor perl,
and awk seemed like a more straighforward solution to learn at the moment. :)
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