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--- awk:introduction_to_awk [2020/05/04 22:53] – created peter
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-====== AWK - Introduction to AWK ======
-**AWK** is a programming-language tool used to manipulate text.
-It allows you to create short programs that read input files, sort data, process it, perform arithmetic on the input, and generate reports, among myriad other functions.
-The language of the AWK utility resembles the shell-programming language in many areas, although AWK’s syntax is very much its own.
-When first created, AWK was designed to work in the text-processing arena, and the language is based on executing a series of instructions whenever a pattern is matched in the input data.
-  * The utility scans each line of a file, looking for patterns that match those given on the command line.
-  * If a match is found, it takes the next programming step. If no match is found, it then proceeds to the next line.
-The general syntax for the command is:
-<code bash>
-awk '{pattern + action}' {filenames}
-</code>
-...where pattern represents what AWK is looking for in the data, and action is a series of commands executed when a match is found.
-Curly brackets ({}) are not always required around your program, but they are used to group a series of instructions based on a specific pattern.