Effective awk Programming, 4th Edition

When processing text files, the awk language is ideal for handling dataextraction, reporting, and data-reformatting jobs. This practical guide servesas 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.

In this thoroughly revised edition, author and gawk lead developer Arnold Robbinsdescribes the awk language and gawk program in detail, shows you how to use awk andgawk for problem solving, and then dives into specific features of gawk. System administrators, programmers, webmasters, and otherpower users will find everything they need to know about awk and gawk. You will learnhow to:

• Format text and use regular expressions in awk and gawk
• Process data using awk's operators and built-in functions
• Manage data relationships using associative arrays
• Define your own functions
• "Think in awk" with two full chapters of sample functions and programs
• Take advantage of gawk's many advanced features
• Debug awk programs with the gawk built-in debugger
• Extend gawk by writing new functions in C or C++

This book is published under the terms of the GNU FreeDocumentation License. You have thefreedom to copy and modify this GNU manual.