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:

awk '{pattern + action}' {filenames}

…where pattern represents what AWK is looking for in the data, and action is a series of commands executed when a match is found.