What is awk, and how do I use it?

At Indiana University, you can use awk on all the Unix-based central systems. Although awk is a complete pattern scanning and processing language, it is most commonly used as a Unix command-line filter to reformat the output of other commands. For example, to print only the second and sixth fields of the date command (the month and year) with a space separating them, at the Unix prompt, you would enter:

To read the online manual (the man page) for awk, at the Unix prompt, enter:

Also, consult the newsgroup comp.lang.awk.

gawk is a version of awk produced by the GNU Project. At IU, it is available on Quarry in the /usr/bin/gawk directory, and on Libra in the /opt/freeware/bin/gawk directory.

For information about gawk, at the Unix prompt, enter:

Also see:

• In Unix, what do some obscurely named commands stand for?
• What do some common Unix file extensions mean?
• What is Perl, and where can I get more information about it?
• In Unix, what is the man command, and how do I use it to read manual pages?
• For Unix, where can I find GNU software packages?