What is AWK?

AWK is an interpreted programming language designed for text processing and report generation. It is typically used for data manipulation, such as searching for items within data, performing arithmetic operations, and restructuring raw data for generating reports in most Unix-like operating systems. Using AWK programs, one can handle repetitive text-editing problems with very simple and short programs. AWK is a pattern-action language; it searches for patterns in a given input and, when a match is found, it performs the corresponding action. The pattern can be made of strings, regular expressions, comparison operations on numbers, fields, variables, and so on. AWK reads the input files and splits each input line of the file into fields automatically.

AWK has most of the well-designed features that every programming language should contain. Its syntax particularly resembles that of the C programming language. It is named after its original three authors:

• Alfred V. Aho
• Peter J. Weinberger
• Brian W. Kernighan

AWK is a very powerful, elegant, and simple tool that every person dealing with text processing should be familiar with.