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Awk is a powerful, domain-specific language for text processing. Whether you’re automating seat lookups in a movie theater or parsing system statistics, Awk’s field-oriented syntax and built-in variables make it easy to filter, transform, and format structured text.

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Why Use Awk?

  • Processes structured data by rows (records) and columns (fields)
  • Handles irregular whitespace automatically
  • Integrates seamlessly into Unix pipelines
  • Offers concise one-liners or full-fledged scripts

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Fields and Records

Imagine a seating chart stored in minimovies.txt, where “Y” means a seat is taken and “N” means it’s available. Awk treats each line as a record and each whitespace-separated item as a field.
The image is an "Introduction to awk" diagram showing a table with columns labeled 1 to 5 and rows containing letters "a" to "e" with "y" and "n" indicating whether something is taken or not. A legend explains that "y" means it's taken and "n" means it's not.
  • Columns ➔ Fields ($1, $2, …)
  • Rows ➔ Records (NR is the built-in record counter)

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Extracting a Specific Seat

Step 1: Select the third column ($3) for every record.
Step 2: Filter for record number 2 using NR.
The image is an introduction to the "awk" command, showing a table with columns labeled a, b, c, d, e, and highlighting column c. It includes instructions for using "awk" to extract column c and create a comparison operation for equality.
# Verify Awk installation
$ awk --version
# Step 1: Print the 3rd field for each line
$ awk '{ print $3 }' minimovies.txt
c
n
n
n
y

# Step 2: Only line 2
$ awk 'NR == 2 { print $3 }' minimovies.txt
n
NR is a built-in Awk variable representing the current record (line) number.
Fields are referenced as $1, $2, etc.

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Awk as a Domain-Specific Language

Awk is more than a simple filter—it’s a small programming language tailored for text. It provides:
  • Pattern-action statements
  • Built-in variables (NR, NF, FS, OFS)
  • Control structures (if, while, for)
The image is a slide titled "Introduction to awk," explaining that a Domain-Specific Language is a programming language designed for a specific subject area.
Awk treats any sequence of spaces and tabs as the default field separator (FS = [ \t]+).

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Handling Irregular Spacing

Even if your data has inconsistent spacing, Awk splits fields correctly:
The image is an introduction to "awk," highlighting its ability to create powerful programs or one-liner scripts for parsing large and complex text data easily.
$ awk 'NR == 2 { print $3 }' minimovies.txt
n

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Integrating Awk with Unix Pipelines

Combine Awk with other commands to filter and format on the fly: 
$ cat minimovies.txt | awk '$1 == "2" { print $4 }'
n

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Common Use Cases

CommandPurposeExample
topSystem runtime statstop | awk '{ print $2 }' | head -5
psProcess listingps aux | awk '$3 > 50 {print $1, $3}'
df -hDisk usage reportdf -h | awk '$5 > "80%"'
$ top | awk '{ print $2 }' | head -n 5
702
Avg:
996838
353T
41224173/79G

$ df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
C:/Program Files/Git   459G  182G  277G  40% /
G:                     15G     0   15G   0% /g

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Writing Full Awk Scripts

Instead of one-liners, you can write complete Awk programs: 
#!/usr/bin/awk -f
BEGIN {
    print "Hello, World!"
}
Make it executable and run directly: 
$ chmod +x hello.awk
$ ./hello.awk
Hello, World!
Ensure the shebang path (/usr/bin/awk) matches your system’s Awk installation.
Awk transforms text processing into an intuitive workflow by combining pattern matching, field manipulation, and a minimal scripting language. Whether you need quick one-liners or full scripts, Awk has you covered.

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