Minimal Perl

Chapter 5. Perl as a (better) awk command

5.1	A brief history of AWK	122
5.2	Comparing basic features of awk and Perl	123
5.3	Processing fields	130
5.4	Programming with Patterns and Actions	138
5.5	Matching ranges of records	151
5.6	Using relational and arithmetic operators	157
5.7	Using built-in functions	159
5.8	Additional examples	165
5.9	Using the AWK-to-Perl translator: a2p	175
5.10	Summary	175

The awk command is surely one of the most useful in the Unix toolkit. It’s even more important than grep and sed, because it can do everything they can do and more. That’s to be expected, because unlike those commands, awk implements a general-purpose programming language (called AWK), which can handle many types of data-processing tasks.

This is why a Unix “power user” who’s asked ...