sed & awk, 2nd Edition

String Functions

The built-in string functions are much more significant and interesting than the numeric functions. Because awk is essentially designed as a string-processing language, a lot of its power derives from these functions. Table 9.2 lists the string functions found in awk.

Table 9.2. Awk’s Built-In String Functions

Awk Function	Description
gsub(r,s,t)	Globally substitutes s for each match of the regular expression r in the string t. Returns the number of substitutions. If t is not supplied, defaults to $0.
index(s,t)	Returns position of substring t in string s or zero if not present.
length(s)	Returns length of string s or length of $0 if no string is supplied.
match(s,r)	Returns either the position in s where the regular expression r begins, or 0 if no occurrences are found. Sets the values of RSTART and RLENGTH.
split(s,a,sep)	Parses string s into elements of array a using field separator sep; returns number of elements. If sep is not supplied, FS is used. Array splitting works the same way as field splitting.
sprintf(”fmt“,expr)	Uses printf format specification for expr.
sub(r,s,t)	Substitutes s for first match of the regular expression r in the string t. Returns 1 if successful; 0 otherwise. If t is not supplied, defaults to $0.
substr(s,p,n)	Returns substring of string s at beginning position p up to a maximum length of n. If n is not supplied, the rest of the string from p is used.
tolower(s)	Translates all uppercase characters in string s to lowercase and returns the new ...