October 2001
Intermediate to advanced
1040 pages
22h 50m
English
The examples in this section use a sample database, called datafile. In the database, the input field separator, FS, is whitespace, the default. The number of fields, NF, is 8. The number may vary from line to line, but in this file, the number of fields is fixed. The record separator, RS, is the newline, which separates each line of the file. Awk keeps track of the number of each record in the NR variable. The output field separator, OFS, is a space. If a comma is used to separate fields, when the line is printed, each field printed will be separated by a space.
% cat datafile northwest NW Joel Craig 3.0 .98 3 4 western WE Sharon Kelly 5.3 .97 5 23 southwest SW Chris Foster 2.7 .8 2 18 southern SO ...