AWK is a programming language and a suite of tools for text processing, developed in the 1970s at Bell Labs. The name “AWK” is derived from the last names of its authors: Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan.
AWK is particularly useful for processing and manipulating text files that contain structured data. It provides a set of commands for searching, filtering, and transforming text files based on patterns and rules specified in the AWK language.
Some common tasks that can be performed using AWK include:
– Extracting specific columns or fields from a file
– Filtering rows based on certain conditions
– Calculating statistics and aggregating data
– Reformatting data into a different structure or layout
AWK is often used in combination with other Unix tools such as grep, sed, and sort, and is widely available on Unix-based systems. It can also be used on other platforms through third-party implementations.