Awk is a versatile programming language designed for pattern scanning and processing language and often used as a data extraction and reporting tool. It's an excellent filter and report writer. It's a standard feature of most Unix-like operating systems.

Awk is small, fast, simple, and has a clean comprehensible C-like input language. It has robust programming constructs including if/else, while, do/while and for C-style and array iteration.

The name awk comes from the initials of its designers: Alfred V. Aho, Peter J. Weinberger, and Brian W. Kernighan. The original version of awk was written in 1977 at AT&T Bell Laboratories.

The language is suited for:

  • Tallying information from text files and creating reports from the results.
  • Adding additional functions to text editors like "vi".
  • Translating files from one format to another.
  • Creating small databases.
  • Performing mathematical operations on files of numeric data.

There's a limited range of good free books to learn about programming in Awk. Here's my recommended texts.


1. GAWK: Effective AWK Programming Edition 5.0 by Arnold D. Robbins

Effective awk ProgrammingThis practical guide serves as both a reference and tutorial for POSIX-standard awk and for the GNU implementation, called gawk. This book is useful for novices and awk experts alike.

GAWK: Effective AWK Programming explains both how to write programs in the awk language and how to run the awk utility. The term "awk program" refers to software written in the awk programming language.

The book serves as both a tutorial and reference guide. The first part of the book describes the awk language and the gawk program in detail. The second part of the book shows you how to use awk and gawk to solve problems. The third part concentrates on features specific to gawk. The final part of the book provides appendices, and a useful Glossary. There's a wealth of information in the book.

Read the 5th edition in PDF format at https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.pdf.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify GAWK: Effective AWK Programming Edition under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3.

The book's cover relates to the 4th edition published by O'Reilly.


2. Awk Tutorial by Bruce Barnett

Awk TutorialAwk Tutorial discusses Awk, a cornerstone of UNIX shell programming.

Chapters cover:

  • Executing an Awk script.
  • Which shell to use with Awk?
  • Dynamic Variables.
  • Arithmetic Expressions.
  • Summary of Awk Commands.
  • Awk Built-in Variables: FS, OFS, NF, NR, RS, ORS, and FILENAME.
  • Associative Arrays.
  • Picture Perfect PRINTF Output.
  • Flow Control with next and exit.
  • Awk Numerical Functions.
  • String Functions.
  • User Defined Functions.
  • Awk patterns.
  • Formatting Awk programs.

Read the tutorial at https://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Awk.html.


3. An Awk Primer by Wikibooks

Awk PrimerAn Awk Primer is a useful guide which explains Awk's syntax in some depth covering search patterns, numbers and strings, variables, arrays, operations, standard functions, user-defined functions, control structures, and more.

There's also some example Awk program files, and a quick reference guide.

Read the book online at https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/An_Awk_Primer. There's a printable version available here.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute, and/or modify An Awk Primer under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.


All books in this series:

Free Programming Books
Java General-purpose, concurrent, class-based, object-oriented, high-level language
C General-purpose, procedural, portable, high-level language
Python General-purpose, structured, powerful language
C++ General-purpose, portable, free-form, multi-paradigm language
C# Combines the power and flexibility of C++ with the simplicity of Visual Basic
JavaScript Interpreted, prototype-based, scripting language
PHP PHP has been at the helm of the web for many years
HTML HyperText Markup Language
SQL Access and manipulate data held in a relational database management system
Ruby General purpose, scripting, structured, flexible, fully object-oriented language
Assembly As close to writing machine code without writing in pure hexadecimal
Swift Powerful and intuitive general-purpose programming language
Groovy Powerful, optionally typed and dynamic language
Go Compiled, statically typed programming language
Pascal Imperative and procedural language designed in the late 1960s
Perl High-level, general-purpose, interpreted, scripting, dynamic language
R De facto standard among statisticians and data analysts
COBOL Common Business-Oriented Language
Scala Modern, object-functional, multi-paradigm, Java-based language
Fortran The first high-level language, using the first compiler
Scratch Visual programming language designed for 8-16 year-old children
Lua Designed as an embeddable scripting language
Logo Dialect of Lisp that features interactivity, modularity, extensibility
Rust Ideal for systems, embedded, and other performance critical code
Lisp Unique features - excellent to study programming constructs
Ada ALGOL-like programming language, extended from Pascal and other languages
Haskell Standardized, general-purpose, polymorphically, statically typed language
Scheme A general-purpose, functional language descended from Lisp and Algol
Prolog A general purpose, declarative, logic programming language
Forth Imperative stack-based programming language
Clojure Dialect of the Lisp programming language
Julia High-level, high-performance language for technical computing
Awk Versatile language designed for pattern scanning and processing language
CoffeeScript Transcompiles into JavaScript inspired by Ruby, Python and Haskell
BASIC Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code
Erlang General-purpose, concurrent, declarative, functional language
VimL Powerful scripting language of the Vim editor
OCaml The main implementation of the Caml language
ECMAScript Best known as the language embedded in web browsers
Bash Shell and command language; popular both as a shell and a scripting language
LaTeX Professional document preparation system and document markup language
TeX Markup and programming language - create professional quality typeset text
Arduino Inexpensive, flexible, open source microcontroller platform
TypeScript Strict syntactical superset of JavaScript adding optional static typing
Elixir Relatively new functional language running on the Erlang virtual machine
F# Uses functional, imperative, and object-oriented programming methods
Tcl Dynamic language based on concepts of Lisp, C, and Unix shells
Factor Dynamic stack-based programming language
Eiffel Object-oriented language designed by Bertrand Meyer
Agda Dependently typed functional language based on intuitionistic Type Theory
Icon Wide variety of features for processing and presenting symbolic data
XML Rules for defining semantic tags describing structure ad meaning
Vala Object-oriented language, syntactically similar to C#
Standard ML General-purpose functional language characterized as "Lisp with types"
D General-purpose systems programming language with a C-like syntax
Dart Client-optimized language for fast apps on multiple platforms
Markdown Plain text formatting syntax designed to be easy-to-read and easy-to-write
Kotlin More modern version of Java
Objective-C Object-oriented language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to C
PureScript Small strongly, statically typed language compiling to JavaScript
ClojureScript Compiler for Clojure that targets JavaScript
VHDL Hardware description language used in electronic design automation
J Array programming language based primarily on APL
LabVIEW Designed to enable domain experts to build power systems quickly
PostScript Interpreted, stack-based and Turing complete language
Raku Member of the Perl family of programming languages
Dylan Multi-paradigm language supporting functional and object-oriented coding
Coq Dependently typed language similar to Agda, Idris, F* and others