AWK
Pattern-action text processing language — a one-liner powerhouse for parsing and transforming structured text files.
dynamic
interpreted
since 1977
scriptingdeclarativeimperative
AWK processes text files line by line, matching each line against patterns and executing corresponding actions. A one-liner can sum a column, filter rows, reformat CSV, or extract fields from log files. gawk (GNU AWK) extends the original with network I/O, arrays, and Unicode. AWK is available on every Unix-like system and remains invaluable for data wrangling in pipelines.