CentOS Quick Start Guide

awk

The awk command is used to extract data from a file and print specific contents. It is quite often used to restructure the data and construct reports. Its name is derived from the last names of its creators: Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan. Its main features include the following:

• It is an interpreted programming language similar to C
• It is used for data manipulation in files, and for retrieving and processing text from files
• It views files as records and fields
• It has arithmetic and string operators
• It has variables, conditional statements, and loops
• It reads from a file or from a standard input device and outputs to a standard output device such as a Terminal

Its general invoking syntax is as follows:

$ awk '/pattern/{command}' ...