Mac OS X in a Nutshell

Name

awk

Synopsis

awk [options] [program] [var=value ...] [files]

Uses the pattern-matching program to process the specified files. awk has been replaced by nawk (there’s also a GNU version called gawk). Program instructions have the general form:

                     pattern { procedure }

pattern and procedure are optional. When specified on the command line, program must be enclosed in single quotes to prevent the shell from interpreting its special symbols. Any variables specified in program can be assigned an initial value by using command-line arguments of the form var = value. For more information on awk, see sed & awk, Second Edition (O’Reilly & Associates, Inc., 1997).

Options

-f file

Use program instructions contained in file, instead of specifying program on the command line.

-F c

Treat input file as fields separated by character c. By default, input fields are separated by runs of spaces and/or tabs.