Learning AWK Programming

The END block

The END block is executed after the last input line of the last input file is read. This block is executed at the end and is generally used for rendering totals, averages, and for processing data and figures that were read in the various input records. The syntax of the END block is as follows:

END { action / awk-commands }

We can have multiple BEGIN or END blocks in a program. The action in that block will get executed as per the appearance of the block in that program. It is not mandatory to have BEGIN first and END last. The BEGIN and END blocks do not contain patterns, they contain action statements only.

Here is an example of the usage of the BEGIN and END blocks:

$ awk 'BEGIN { print "==Employee Info==" } # begin block ...