The AWK Programming Language, 2nd Edition

4

Data Processing

Awk was originally intended for everyday data processing, such as information retrieval, data validation, and data transformation and summarization like those in the three previous chapters. In this chapter, we will consider similar but more complex tasks. Most of the examples deal with the usual line-at-a-time processing, but the final section describes how to handle data where an input record may occupy several lines.

Awk programs are often developed incrementally: a few lines are written and tested, then a few more added, and so on. The longer programs in this book were developed in this way.

It’s also possible to write Awk programs in the traditional way, sketching the outline of the program, consulting the language manual, ...