Awk is a scripting language specially conceived for editing and evaluating text files, and it provides a very useful tool for system administrators.

With its help, for example, a modified data path can be integrated system-wide in a single step. Many more possible applications exist, however, including evaluating text files with data recorded in tabular format.

An Awk script consists of single commands or command blocks that are executed under certain conditions or for all input rows. You can call the Awk commands directly from the command line or save them in a file as a script. You can find all sample data for this article online [1]. To try the examples, unpack the archive into an empty directory. The archive will include all the files for your exercises. Some examples include Linux commands along with Awk commands.

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