Practical UNIX

Checking Only Specific Fields to Select a Line

awk is an extensive programming language that is available on all commercial UNIX systems. You can use a subset of it as a grep-like command-line utility that provides search and display capabilities not available in grep or egrep.

See Table 18.4 for other standard properties of the awk command.

Table 18.4. Other Properties of the awk Command

Property	See page
Allows relative and absolute pathname arguments	70
Processes either filename arguments OR standard input	115
Changes only the output, not the file	111
Allows a list of filenames and filename wildcards	292
Allows output to be piped or redirected	116

Displaying a Line if Exact Match in One Field

grep checks the whole line for a match. If you want to check ...