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

In this thoroughly revised edition, author and gawk lead developer Arnold Robbins describes the awk language and gawk program in detail, shows you how to use awk and gawk for problem solving, and then dives into specific features of gawk. System administrators, programmers, webmasters, and other power users will find everything they need to know about awk and gawk. You will learn how 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 Free Documentation License. You have the freedom to copy and modify this GNU manual.

Royalties from the sales of this book go to the Free Software Foundation and to the author.

在处理文本文件时，awk语言是处理数据提取、报告和数据格式化工作的理想选择。这本实用指南既是POSIX标准awk的参考资料，也是GNU实施方案（称为gawk）的教程。本书对新手和awk专家都很有用。

在这个彻底修订的版本中，作者和gawk的主要开发者Arnold Robbins详细描述了awk语言和gawk程序，告诉你如何使用awk和gawk来解决问题，然后深入探讨gawk的具体功能。系统管理员、程序员、网站管理员和其他高级用户会发现他们需要知道的关于awk和gawk的一切。你将学会如何。

在awk和gawk中格式化文本和使用正则表达式

使用awk的运算符和内置函数处理数据

使用关联数组管理数据关系

定义你自己的函数

通过两章完整的示例函数和程序来 "用awk思考"。

利用gawk的许多高级功能的优势

用gawk的内置调试器调试awk程序

通过用C或C++编写新函数来扩展gawk

本书是在GNU自由文档许可证的条款下出版的。您可以自由地复制和修改本GNU手册。

本书的销售版税归自由软件基金会和作者所有。