gawk (gnu awk)

Find and Replace text within file(s)

SYNTAX
      awk <Options> 'PROGRAM'

      awk <Options> 'PROGRAM' Input-File1 Input-File2 ...

   If no Input-File is specified then `awk' applies the PROGRAM to 
   the "standard input", this can either be the piped output of some
   other command or whatever you type on the terminal. Typed input will
   continue until you indicate end-of-file by typing `Control-d'.

KEY
`-F FS'
`--field-separator FS'
     Use FS for the input field separator (the value of the `FS'
     predefined variable).

`-f PROGRAM-FILE'
`--file PROGRAM-FILE'
     Read the `awk' program source from the file PROGRAM-FILE, instead
     of from the first command line argument.

`-mf NNN'
`-mr NNN'
     The `f' flag sets the maximum number of fields, and the `r' flag
     sets the maximum record size.  These options are ignored by
     `gawk', since `gawk' has no predefined limits; they are only for
     compatibility with the Bell Labs research version of Unix `awk'.

`-v VAR=VAL'
`--assign VAR=VAL'
     Assign the variable VAR the value VAL before program execution
     begins.

`-W traditional'
`-W compat'
`--traditional'
`--compat'
     Use compatibility mode, in which `gawk' extensions are turned off.

`-W lint'
`--lint'
     Give warnings about dubious or non-portable `awk' constructs.

`-W lint-old'
`--lint-old'
     Warn about constructs that are not available in the original
     Version 7 Unix version of `awk'.

`-W posix'
`--posix'
     Use POSIX compatibility mode, in which `gawk' extensions are
     turned off and additional restrictions apply.

`-W re-interval'
`--re-interval'
     Allow interval expressions, in regexps.

`-W source=PROGRAM-TEXT'
`--source PROGRAM-TEXT'
     Use PROGRAM-TEXT as `awk' program source code.  This option allows
     mixing command line source code with source code from files, and is
     particularly useful for mixing command line programs with library
     functions.

`--'
     Signal the end of options.  This is useful to allow further
     arguments to the `awk' program itself to start with a `-'.  This
     is mainly for consistency with POSIX argument parsing conventions.

'PROGRAM'
     a series of patterns and actions:

PROGRAM patterns and actions

The PROGRAM statement that tells `awk' what to do consists of a series of "rules". Each rule specifies one pattern to search for, and one action to perform when that pattern is found.

For ease of reading, each line in an `awk' program is normally a separate PROGRAM statement , like this:

     PATTERN { ACTION }
     PATTERN { ACTION }
     ...

However, `gawk' will ignore newlines after any of the following:
    , { ? : || && do else


e.g. 2 patterns each followed by an action:

awk '/15/ { print $0 } 
     /40/ { print $0 }' BBS-list

A regular expression enclosed in slashes (`/') is an `awk' pattern that matches every input record whose text belongs to that set. e.g. the pattern /foo/ matches any input record containing the three characters `foo', *anywhere* in the record.

Comments - start with a `#', and continue to the end of the line:

 # This program prints a nice friendly message.

`awk' patterns may be one of the following:

/REGULAR EXPRESSION/        - Match =
PATTERN && PATTERN          - AND
PATTERN || PATTERN          - OR
! PATTERN                   - NOT
PATTERN ? PATTERN : PATTERN - If, Then, Else
PATTERN1, PATTERN2          - Range Start - end
BEGIN                       - Perform action BEFORE input file is read
END                         - Perform action AFTER input file is read

In addition to simple pattern matching `awk' has a huge range of text and arithmetic Functions, Variables and Operators.

For full details see the info documentation

A few examples...

This program prints the length of the longest input line:

 awk '{ if (length($0) > max) max = length($0) }
      END { print max }' data
     

This program prints every line that has at least one field.  This
is an easy way to delete blank lines from a file (or rather, to
create a new file similar to the old file but from which the blank
lines have been deleted)

 awk 'NF > 0' data


This program prints seven random numbers from zero to 100,
inclusive.
 awk 'BEGIN { for (i = 1; i <= 7; i++)
                print int(101 * rand()) }'

This program prints the total number of bytes used by FILES.

 ls -lg FILES | awk '{ x += $5 } ; END { print "total bytes: " x }'


This program prints a sorted list of the login names of all users.
 awk -F: '{ print $1 }' /etc/passwd | sort


This program counts lines in a file.
 awk 'END { print NR }' data


This program prints the even numbered lines in the data file.  If
you were to use the expression `NR % 2 == 1' instead, it would
print the odd numbered lines.
 awk 'NR % 2 == 0' data

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