Main index

Introducing UNIX and Linux

Awk

Overview
What is 'awk'?
Invoking 'awk'
Naming the fields
Formatted output
      Operators used by Awk
Patterns
Variables
      Accessing Values
      Special variables
Arguments to 'awk' scripts
Arrays
Field and record separators
Functions
      List of Awk functions
Summary
Exercises

Overview

This chapter

• introduces simple use of Awk.

The utility known as Awk, and described as a 'pattern scanning and processing language', is a complete programming language, with a syntax resembling that of C.

It can be studied as a language in its own right, or can be integrated into shell programming when other utilities are found to lack sufficient power or flexibility.