Learning Linux Shell Scripting - Second Edition

Actions

Actions are performed when the required pattern is found in a record. Actions are enclosed in curly brackets ({ and }). We can specify different commands in the same curly brackets, but those should be separated by a semicolon.

The syntax is as follows:

pattern{ action statement; action statement; .. } 
     or 
pattern 
{    action statement 
       action statement 
} 

The following example gives a better idea:

    $ awk '/Bill/{print $1, $2 ", Happy Birth Day !"}' people.txt
  

This is the output:

    Bill Thomas, Happy Birth Day !
  

Whenever a record contains the Bill pattern, awk performs the action of printing field 1, field 2, and prints the message Happy Birth Day.