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    Awk Programming

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    Srinidhi
    Awk is a scripting language used for manipulating data and generating reports. It requires no compiling and allows the use of variables, functions, and operators. The basic structure of an awk program follows the pattern of "pattern {action}" to specify when an action is performed on each line. Awk is commonly used to process the output of commands like "ls -l" to print out filenames and owners.

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    Awk Programming

    Uploaded by

    Srinidhi
    44 views5 pages
    Awk is a scripting language used for manipulating data and generating reports. It requires no compiling and allows the use of variables, functions, and operators. The basic structure of an awk program follows the pattern of "pattern {action}" to specify when an action is performed on each line. Awk is commonly used to process the output of commands like "ls -l" to print out filenames and owners.

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    AWK PROGRAMMING

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    Awk is a scripting language used for manipulating data and generating reports. It requires no compiling and allows the use of variables, functions, and operators. The basic structure of an awk program follows the pattern of "pattern {action}" to specify when an action is performed on each line. Awk is commonly used to process the output of commands like "ls -l" to print out filenames and owners.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    44 views5 pages

    Awk Programming

    Uploaded by

    Srinidhi
    Awk is a scripting language used for manipulating data and generating reports. It requires no compiling and allows the use of variables, functions, and operators. The basic structure of an awk program follows the pattern of "pattern {action}" to specify when an action is performed on each line. Awk is commonly used to process the output of commands like "ls -l" to print out filenames and owners.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 5

    AWK PROGRAMMING

    Awk is a scripting language used for manipulating data and generating reports. The awk
    command programming language requires no compiling and allows the user to use
    variables, numeric functions, string functions, and logical operators. 
    Awk is a utility that enables a programmer to write tiny but effective programs in the
    form of statements that define text patterns that are to be searched for in each line of
    a document and the action that is to be

    Basic Structure
    The essential organization of an AWK program follows the
    form:

    pattern { action }

    The pattern specifies when the action is performed. Like


    most UNIX utilities, AWK is line oriented. That is, the pattern
    specifies a test that is performed with each line read as
    input. If the condition is true, then the action is taken. The
    default pattern is something that matches every line. This is
    the blank or null pattern. Two other important patterns are
    specified by the keywords "BEGIN" and "END". As you might
    expect, these two words specify actions to be taken before
    any lines are read, and after the last line is read. The AWK
    program below:
    BEGIN { print "START" }
    { print }
    END { print "STOP" }

    adds one line before and one line after the input file. This
    isn't very useful, but with a simple change, we can make this
    into a typical AWK program:

    BEGIN { print "File\tOwner"}


    { print $8, "\t", $3}
    END { print " - DONE -" }

    I'll improve the script in the next sections, but we'll call it
    "FileOwner". But let's not put it into a script or file yet. I will
    cover that part in a bit. Hang on and follow with me so you
    get the flavor of AWK.
    The characters "\t" Indicates a tab character so the output
    lines up on even boundries. The "$8" and "$3" have a
    meaning similar to a shell script. Instead of the eighth and
    third argument, they mean the eighth and third field of the
    input line. You can think of a field as a column, and the
    action you specify operates on each line or row read in.

    There are two differences between AWK and a shell


    processing the characters within double quotes. AWK
    understands special characters follow the "\" character like
    "t". The Bourne and C UNIX shells do not. Also, unlike the
    shell (and PERL) AWK does not evaluate variables within
    strings. To explain, the second line could not be written like
    this:

    {print "$8\t$3" }

    That example would print "$8 $3". Inside the quotes, the
    dollar sign is not a special character. Outside, it corresponds
    to a field. What do I mean by the third and eight field?
    Consider the Solaris "/usr/bin/ls -l" command, which has
    eight columns of information. The System V version (Similar
    to the Linux version), "/usr/5bin/ls -l" has 9 columns. The
    third column is the owner, and the eighth (or nineth) column
    in the name of the file. This AWK program can be used to
    process the output of the "ls -l" command, printing out the
    filename, then the owner, for each file. I'll show you how.

    Update: On a linux system, change "$8" to "$9".

    One more point about the use of a dollar sign. In scripting


    languages like Perl and the various shells, a dollar sign
    means the word following is the name of the variable. Awk is
    different. The dollar sign means that we are refering to a
    field or column in the current line. When switching between
    Perl and AWK you must remener that "$" has a different
    meaning. So the following piece of code prints two "fields" to
    standard out. The first field printed is the number "5", the
    second is the fifth field (or column) on the input line.
    BEGIN { x=5 }
    { print x, $x}
    taken when a match is found

    Types of AWK
    Following are the variants of AWK −
     AWK − Original AWK from AT & T Laboratory.
     NAWK − Newer and improved version of AWK from AT & T Laboratory.
     GAWK − It is GNU AWK. All GNU/Linux distributions ship GAWK. It is fully
    compatible with AWK and NAWK.

    Typical Uses of AWK


    Myriad of tasks can be done with AWK. Listed below are just a few of them −

     Text processing,
     Producing formatted text reports,
     Performing arithmetic operations,
     Performing string operations, and many more.

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