When and where to use AWK

AWK is simpler than any other utility for text processing and is available as the default on Unix-like operating systems. However, some people might say Perl is a superior choice for text processing, as AWK is functionally a subset of Perl, but the learning curve for Perl is steeper than that of AWK; AWK is simpler than Perl. AWK programs are smaller and hence quicker to execute. Anybody who knows the Linux command line can start writing AWK programs in no time. Here are a few use cases of AWK:

• Text processing
• Producing formatted text reports/labels
• Performing arithmetic operations on fields of a file
• Performing string operations on different fields of a file

Programs written in AWK are smaller than they would be in other higher-level languages for similar text processing operations. AWK programs are interpreted on a GNU/Linux Terminal and thus avoid the compiling, debugging phase of software development in other languages.