GAWK(1) Utility Commands GAWK(1)
NAME
gawk - pattern scanning and processing language
SYNOPSIS
gawk [ POSIX or GNU style options ] -f program-file [ -- ] file ...
gawk [ POSIX or GNU style options ] [ -- ] program-text file ...
DESCRIPTION
Gawk is the GNU Project's implementation of the AWK programming lan-
guage. It conforms to the definition of the language in the POSIX
1003.1 standard. This version in turn is based on the description in
The AWK Programming Language, by Aho, Kernighan, and Weinberger. Gawk
provides the additional features found in the current version of Brian
Kernighan's awk and numerous GNU-specific extensions.
The command line consists of options to gawk itself, the AWK program
text (if not supplied via the -f or --include options), and values to
be made available in the ARGC and ARGV pre-defined AWK variables.
PREFACE
This manual page is intentionally as terse as possible. Full details
are provided in GAWK: Effective AWK Programming, and you should look
there for the full story on any specific feature. Where possible,
links to the online version of the manual are provided.
OPTION FORMAT
Gawk options may be either traditional POSIX-style one letter options,
or GNU-style long options. POSIX options start with a single “-”,
while long options start with “--”. Long options are provided for both
GNU-specific features and for POSIX-mandated features.
Gawk-specific options are typically used in long-option form. Argu-
ments to long options are either joined with the option by an = sign,
with no intervening spaces, or they may be provided in the next command
line argument. Long options may be abbreviated, as long as the abbre-
viation remains unique.
Additionally, every long option has a corresponding short option, so
that the option's functionality may be used from within #! executable
scripts.
OPTIONS
Gawk accepts the following options. Standard options are listed first,
followed by options for gawk extensions, listed alphabetically by short
option.
-f program-file, --file program-file
Read the AWK program source from the file program-file, instead
of from the first command line argument. Multiple -f options
may be used. Files read with -f are treated as if they begin
with an implicit @namespace "awk" statement.
-F fs, --field-separator fs
Use fs for the input field separator (the value of the FS prede-
fined variable).
-v var=val, --assign var=val
Assign the value val to the variable var, before execution of
the program begins. Such variable values are available to the
BEGIN rule of an AWK program.
-b, --characters-as-bytes
Treat all input data as single-byte characters. The --posix op-
tion overrides this one.
-c, --traditional
Run in compatibility mode. In compatibility mode, gawk behaves
identically to Brian Kernighan's awk; none of the GNU-specific
extensions are recognized.
-C, --copyright
Print the short version of the GNU copyright information message
on the standard output and exit successfully.
-d[file], --dump-variables[=file]
Print a sorted list of global variables, their types and final
values to file. The default file is awkvars.out in the current
directory.
-D[file], --debug[=file]
Enable debugging of AWK programs. By default, the debugger
reads commands interactively from the keyboard (standard input).
The optional file argument specifies a file with a list of com-
mands for the debugger to execute non-interactively.
In this mode of execution, gawk loads the AWK source code and
then prompts for debugging commands. Gawk can only debug AWK
program source provided with the -f and --include options. The
debugger is documented in GAWK: Effective AWK Programming; see
https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/Debug-
ger.html#Debugger.
-e program-text, --source program-text
Use program-text as AWK program source code. Each argument sup-
plied via -e is treated as if it begins with an implicit @name-
space "awk" statement.
-E file, --exec file
Similar to -f, however, this is option is the last one pro-
cessed. This should be used with #! scripts, particularly for
CGI applications, to avoid passing in options or source code (!)
on the command line from a URL. This option disables command-
line variable assignments.
-g, --gen-pot
Scan and parse the AWK program, and generate a GNU .pot (Porta-
ble Object Template) format file on standard output with entries
for all localizable strings in the program. The program itself
is not executed.
-h, --help
Print a relatively short summary of the available options on the
standard output. Per the GNU Coding Standards, these options
cause an immediate, successful exit.
-i include-file, --include include-file
Load an awk source library. This searches for the library using
the AWKPATH environment variable. If the initial search fails,
another attempt will be made after appending the .awk suffix.
The file will be loaded only once (i.e., duplicates are elimi-
nated), and the code does not constitute the main program
source. Files read with --include are treated as if they begin
with an implicit @namespace "awk" statement.
-I, --trace
Print the internal byte code names as they are executed when
running the program. The trace is printed to standard error.
Each ``op code'' is preceded by a + sign in the output.
-l lib, --load lib
Load a gawk extension from the shared library lib. This
searches for the library using the AWKLIBPATH environment vari-
able. If the initial search fails, another attempt will be made
after appending the default shared library suffix for the plat-
form. The library initialization routine is expected to be
named dl_load().
-L [value], --lint[=value]
Provide warnings about constructs that are dubious or non-porta-
ble to other AWK implementations. See https://www.gnu.org/soft-
ware/gawk/manual/html_node/Options.html#Options for the list of
possible values for value.
-M, --bignum
Force arbitrary precision arithmetic on numbers. This option has
no effect if gawk is not compiled to use the GNU MPFR and GMP
libraries. (In such a case, gawk issues a warning.)
NOTE: This feature is on parole. The primary gawk maintainer is
no longer supporting it, although there is a member of the de-
velopment team who is. If this situation changes, the feature
will be removed from gawk.
-n, --non-decimal-data
Recognize octal and hexadecimal values in input data. Use this
option with great caution!
-N, --use-lc-numeric
Force gawk to use the locale's decimal point character when
parsing input data.
-o[file], --pretty-print[=file]
Output a pretty printed version of the program to file. The de-
fault file is awkprof.out in the current directory. This option
implies --no-optimize.
-O, --optimize
Enable gawk's default optimizations upon the internal represen-
tation of the program. This option is on by default.
-p[prof-file], --profile[=prof-file]
Start a profiling session, and send the profiling data to prof-
file. The default is awkprof.out in the current directory. The
profile contains execution counts of each statement in the pro-
gram in the left margin and function call counts for each user-
defined function. Gawk runs more slowly in this mode. This op-
tion implies --no-optimize.
-P, --posix
This turns on compatibility mode, and disables a number of com-
mon extensions.
-r, --re-interval
Enable the use of interval expressions in regular expression
matching. Interval expressions are enabled by default, but this
option remains for backwards compatibility.
-s, --no-optimize
Disable gawk's default optimizations upon the internal represen-
tation of the program.
-S, --sandbox
Run gawk in sandbox mode, disabling the system() function, input
redirection with getline, output redirection with print and
printf, and loading dynamic extensions. Command execution
(through pipelines) is also disabled.
-t, --lint-old
Provide warnings about constructs that are not portable to the
original version of UNIX awk.
-V, --version
Print version information for this particular copy of gawk on
the standard output. This is useful when reporting bugs. Per
the GNU Coding Standards, these options cause an immediate, suc-
cessful exit.
-- Signal the end of options. This is useful to allow further argu-
ments to the AWK program itself to start with a “-”.
In compatibility mode, any other options are flagged as invalid, but
are otherwise ignored. In normal operation, as long as program text
has been supplied, unknown options are passed on to the AWK program in
the ARGV array for processing.
For POSIX compatibility, the -W option may be used, followed by the
name of a long option.
AWK PROGRAM EXECUTION
An AWK program consists of a sequence of optional directives, pattern-
action statements, and optional function definitions.
@include "filename"
@load "filename"
@namespace "name"
pattern { action statements }
function name(parameter list) { statements }
Gawk first reads the program source from the program-file(s) if speci-
fied, from arguments to --source, or from the first non-option argument
on the command line. The -f and --source options may be used multiple
times on the command line. Gawk reads the program text as if all the
program-files and command line source texts had been concatenated to-
gether.
In addition, lines beginning with @include may be used to include other
source files into your program. This is equivalent to using the --in-
clude option.
Lines beginning with @load may be used to load extension functions into
your program. This is equivalent to using the --load option.
The environment variable AWKPATH specifies a search path to use when
finding source files named with the -f and --include options. If this
variable does not exist, the default path is ".:/usr/local/share/awk".
(The actual directory may vary, depending upon how gawk was built and
installed.) If a file name given to the -f option contains a “/” char-
acter, no path search is performed.
The environment variable AWKLIBPATH specifies a search path to use when
finding source files named with the --load option. If this variable
does not exist, the default path is "/usr/local/lib/gawk". (The actual
directory may vary, depending upon how gawk was built and installed.)
Gawk executes AWK programs in the following order. First, all variable
assignments specified via the -v option are performed. Next, gawk com-
piles the program into an internal form. Then, gawk executes the code
in the BEGIN rule(s) (if any), and then proceeds to read each file
named in the ARGV array (up to ARGV[ARGC-1]). If there are no files
named on the command line, gawk reads the standard input.
If a filename on the command line has the form var=val it is treated as
a variable assignment. The variable var will be assigned the value
val. (This happens after any BEGIN rule(s) have been run.)
If the value of a particular element of ARGV is empty (""), gawk skips
over it.
For each input file, if a BEGINFILE rule exists, gawk executes the as-
sociated code before processing the contents of the file. Similarly,
gawk executes the code associated with ENDFILE rules after processing
the file.
For each record in the input, gawk tests to see if it matches any pat-
tern in the AWK program. For each pattern that the record matches,
gawk executes the associated action. The patterns are tested in the
order they occur in the program.
Finally, after all the input is exhausted, gawk executes the code in
the END rule(s) (if any).
Command Line Directories
According to POSIX, files named on the awk command line must be text
files. The behavior is ``undefined'' if they are not. Most versions
of awk treat a directory on the command line as a fatal error.
For gawk, a directory on the command line produces a warning, but is
otherwise skipped. If either of the --posix or --traditional options
is given, then gawk reverts to treating directories on the command line
as a fatal error.
VARIABLES, RECORDS AND FIELDS
AWK variables are dynamic; they come into existence when they are first
used. Their values are either floating-point numbers or strings, or
both, depending upon how they are used. Additionally, gawk allows
variables to have regular-expression type. AWK also has one dimen-
sional arrays; arrays with multiple dimensions may be simulated. How-
ever, gawk provides true arrays of arrays. Several pre-defined vari-
ables are set as a program runs; these are described as needed and sum-
marized below.
Records
Normally, records are separated by newline characters. You can control
how records are separated by assigning values to the built-in variable
RS. See https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/man-
ual/html_node/Records.html for the details.
Fields
As each input record is read, gawk splits the record into fields, using
the value of the FS variable as the field separator. Additionally,
FIELDWIDTHS and FPAT may be used to control input field splitting. See
the details, starting at https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/man-
ual/html_node/Fields.html.
Each field in the input record may be referenced by its position: $1,
$2, and so on. $0 is the whole record, including leading and trailing
whitespace.
The variable NF is set to the total number of fields in the input
record.
References to non-existent fields (i.e., fields after $NF) produce the
null string. However, assigning to a non-existent field (e.g., $(NF+2)
= 5) increases the value of NF, creates any intervening fields with the
null string as their values, and causes the value of $0 to be recom-
puted, with the fields being separated by the value of OFS. References
to negative numbered fields cause a fatal error. Decrementing NF
causes the values of fields past the new value to be lost, and the
value of $0 to be recomputed, with the fields being separated by the
value of OFS.
Assigning a value to an existing field causes the whole record to be
rebuilt when $0 is referenced. Similarly, assigning a value to $0
causes the record to be resplit, creating new values for the fields.
Built-in Variables
Gawk's built-in variables are listed below. This list is purposely
terse. For details, see https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/man-
ual/html_node/Built_002din-Variables.
ARGC The number of command line arguments.
ARGIND The index in ARGV of the current file being processed.
ARGV Array of command line arguments. The array is indexed from
0 to ARGC - 1.
BINMODE On non-POSIX systems, specifies use of “binary” mode for
all file I/O. See https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/man-
ual/html_node/PC-Using.html for the details.
CONVFMT The conversion format for numbers, "%.6g", by default.
ENVIRON An array containing the values of the current environment.
The array is indexed by the environment variables, each el-
ement being the value of that variable.
ERRNO If a system error occurs either doing a redirection for
getline, during a read for getline, or during a close(),
then ERRNO is set to a string describing the error. The
value is subject to translation in non-English locales.
FIELDWIDTHS A whitespace-separated list of field widths. When set,
gawk parses the input into fields of fixed width, instead
of using the value of the FS variable as the field separa-
tor. Each field width may optionally be preceded by a
colon-separated value specifying the number of characters
to skip before the field starts.
FILENAME The name of the current input file. If no files are speci-
fied on the command line, the value of FILENAME is “-”.
However, FILENAME is undefined inside the BEGIN rule (un-
less set by getline).
FNR The input record number in the current input file.
FPAT A regular expression describing the contents of the fields
in a record. When set, gawk parses the input into fields,
where the fields match the regular expression, instead of
using the value of FS as the field separator.
FS The input field separator, a space by default. See
https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/Field-
Separators.html for the details.
FUNCTAB An array whose indices and corresponding values are the
names of all the user-defined or extension functions in the
program. NOTE: You may not use the delete statement with
the FUNCTAB array.
IGNORECASE Controls the case-sensitivity of all regular expression and
string operations. See https://www.gnu.org/soft-
ware/gawk/manual/html_node/Case_002dsensitivity.html for
details.
LINT Provides dynamic control of the --lint option from within
an AWK program.
NF The number of fields in the current input record.
NR The total number of input records seen so far.
OFMT The output format for numbers, "%.6g", by default.
OFS The output field separator, a space by default.
ORS The output record separator, by default a newline.
PREC The working precision of arbitrary precision floating-point
numbers, 53 by default.
PROCINFO The elements of this array provide access to information
about the running AWK program. See
https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/man-
ual/html_node/Auto_002dset for the details.
ROUNDMODE The rounding mode to use for arbitrary precision arithmetic
on numbers, by default "N" (IEEE-754 roundTiesToEven mode).
See https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/Set-
ting-the-rounding-mode for the details.
RS The input record separator, by default a newline.
RT The record terminator. Gawk sets RT to the input text that
matched the character or regular expression specified by
RS.
RSTART The index of the first character matched by match(); 0 if
no match.
RLENGTH The length of the string matched by match(); -1 if no
match.
SUBSEP The string used to separate multiple subscripts in array
elements, by default "\034".
SYMTAB An array whose indices are the names of all currently de-
fined global variables and arrays in the program. You may
not use the delete statement with the SYMTAB array, nor as-
sign to elements with an index that is not a variable name.
TEXTDOMAIN The text domain of the AWK program; used to find the local-
ized translations for the program's strings.
Arrays
Arrays are subscripted with an expression between square brackets ([
and ]). If the expression is an expression list (expr, expr ...) then
the array subscript is a string consisting of the concatenation of the
(string) value of each expression, separated by the value of the SUBSEP
variable. This facility is used to simulate multiply dimensioned ar-
rays. For example:
i = "A"; j = "B"; k = "C"
x[i, j, k] = "hello, world\n"
assigns the string "hello, world\n" to the element of the array x which
is indexed by the string "A\034B\034C". All arrays in AWK are associa-
tive, i.e., indexed by string values.
The special operator in may be used to test if an array has an index
consisting of a particular value:
if (val in array)
print array[val]
If the array has multiple subscripts, use (i, j) in array.
The in construct may also be used in a for loop to iterate over all the
elements of an array. However, the (i, j) in array construct only
works in tests, not in for loops.
An element may be deleted from an array using the delete statement.
The delete statement may also be used to delete the entire contents of
an array, just by specifying the array name without a subscript.
gawk supports true multidimensional arrays. It does not require that
such arrays be ``rectangular'' as in C or C++. See
https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/Arrays for details.
Namespaces
Gawk provides a simple namespace facility to help work around the fact
that all variables in AWK are global.
A qualified name consists of a two simple identifiers joined by a dou-
ble colon (::). The left-hand identifier represents the namespace and
the right-hand identifier is the variable within it. All simple (non-
qualified) names are considered to be in the ``current'' namespace; the
default namespace is awk. However, simple identifiers consisting
solely of uppercase letters are forced into the awk namespace, even if
the current namespace is different.
You change the current namespace with an @namespace "name" directive.
The standard predefined builtin function names may not be used as name-
space names. The names of additional functions provided by gawk may be
used as namespace names or as simple identifiers in other namespaces.
For more details, see https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/man-
ual/html_node/Namespaces.html#Namespaces.
Variable Typing And Conversion
Variables and fields may be (floating point) numbers, or strings, or
both. They may also be regular expressions. How the value of a vari-
able is interpreted depends upon its context. If used in a numeric ex-
pression, it will be treated as a number; if used as a string it will
be treated as a string.
To force a variable to be treated as a number, add zero to it; to force
it to be treated as a string, concatenate it with the null string.
Uninitialized variables have the numeric value zero and the string
value "" (the null, or empty, string).
When a string must be converted to a number, the conversion is accom-
plished using strtod(3). A number is converted to a string by using
the value of CONVFMT as a format string for sprintf(3), with the nu-
meric value of the variable as the argument. However, even though all
numbers in AWK are floating-point, integral values are always converted
as integers.
Gawk performs comparisons as follows: If two variables are numeric,
they are compared numerically. If one value is numeric and the other
has a string value that is a “numeric string,” then comparisons are
also done numerically. Otherwise, the numeric value is converted to a
string and a string comparison is performed. Two strings are compared,
of course, as strings.
Note that string constants, such as "57", are not numeric strings, they
are string constants. The idea of “numeric string” only applies to
fields, getline input, FILENAME, ARGV elements, ENVIRON elements and
the elements of an array created by split() or patsplit() that are nu-
meric strings. The basic idea is that user input, and only user input,
that looks numeric, should be treated that way.
Octal and Hexadecimal Constants
You may use C-style octal and hexadecimal constants in your AWK program
source code. For example, the octal value 011 is equal to decimal 9,
and the hexadecimal value 0x11 is equal to decimal 17.
String Constants
String constants in AWK are sequences of characters enclosed between
double quotes (like "value"). Within strings, certain escape sequences
are recognized, as in C. See https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/man-
ual/html_node/Escape-Sequences for the details.
Regexp Constants
A regular expression constant is a sequence of characters enclosed be-
tween forward slashes (like /value/).
The escape sequences described in the manual may also be used inside
constant regular expressions (e.g., /[ \t\f\n\r\v]/ matches whitespace
characters).
Gawk provides strongly typed regular expression constants. These are
written with a leading @ symbol (like so: @/value/). Such constants
may be assigned to scalars (variables, array elements) and passed to
user-defined functions. Variables that have been so assigned have regu-
lar expression type.
PATTERNS AND ACTIONS
AWK is a line-oriented language. The pattern comes first, and then the
action. Action statements are enclosed in { and }. Either the pattern
may be missing, or the action may be missing, but, of course, not both.
If the pattern is missing, the action executes for every single record
of input. A missing action is equivalent to
{ print }
which prints the entire record.
Comments begin with the # character, and continue until the end of the
line. Empty lines may be used to separate statements. Normally, a
statement ends with a newline, however, this is not the case for lines
ending in a comma, {, ?, :, &&, or ||. Lines ending in do or else also
have their statements automatically continued on the following line.
In other cases, a line can be continued by ending it with a “\”, in
which case the newline is ignored. However, a “\” after a # is not
special.
Multiple statements may be put on one line by separating them with a
“;”. This applies to both the statements within the action part of a
pattern-action pair (the usual case), and to the pattern-action state-
ments themselves.
Patterns
AWK patterns may be one of the following:
BEGIN
END
BEGINFILE
ENDFILE
/regular expression/
relational expression
pattern && pattern
pattern || pattern
pattern ? pattern : pattern
(pattern)
! pattern
pattern1, pattern2
BEGIN and END are two special kinds of patterns which are not tested
against the input. The action parts of all BEGIN patterns are merged
as if all the statements had been written in a single BEGIN rule. They
are executed before any of the input is read. Similarly, all the END
rules are merged, and executed when all the input is exhausted (or when
an exit statement is executed). BEGIN and END patterns cannot be com-
bined with other patterns in pattern expressions. BEGIN and END pat-
terns cannot have missing action parts.
BEGINFILE and ENDFILE are additional special patterns whose actions are
executed before reading the first record of each command-line input
file and after reading the last record of each file. Inside the BEGIN-
FILE rule, the value of ERRNO is the empty string if the file was
opened successfully. Otherwise, there is some problem with the file
and the code should use nextfile to skip it. If that is not done, gawk
produces its usual fatal error for files that cannot be opened.
For /regular expression/ patterns, the associated statement is executed
for each input record that matches the regular expression. Regular ex-
pressions are essentially the same as those in egrep(1). See
https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/Regexp.html for the
details on regular expressions.
A relational expression may use any of the operators defined below in
the section on actions. These generally test whether certain fields
match certain regular expressions.
The &&, ||, and ! operators are logical AND, logical OR, and logical
NOT, respectively, as in C. They do short-circuit evaluation, also as
in C, and are used for combining more primitive pattern expressions.
As in most languages, parentheses may be used to change the order of
evaluation.
The ?: operator is like the same operator in C. If the first pattern
is true then the pattern used for testing is the second pattern, other-
wise it is the third. Only one of the second and third patterns is
evaluated.
The pattern1, pattern2 form of an expression is called a range pattern.
It matches all input records starting with a record that matches pat-
tern1, and continuing until a record that matches pattern2, inclusive.
It does not combine with any other sort of pattern expression.
Actions
Action statements are enclosed in braces, { and }. Action statements
consist of the usual assignment, conditional, and looping statements
found in most languages. The operators, control statements, and in-
put/output statements available are patterned after those in C.
Operators
The operators in AWK, in order of decreasing precedence, are:
(...) Grouping
$ Field reference.
++ -- Increment and decrement, both prefix and postfix.
^ Exponentiation.
+ - ! Unary plus, unary minus, and logical negation.
* / % Multiplication, division, and modulus.
+ - Addition and subtraction.
space String concatenation.
| |& Piped I/O for getline, print, and printf.
< > <= >= == !=
The regular relational operators.
~ !~ Regular expression match, negated match.
in Array membership.
&& Logical AND.
|| Logical OR.
?: The C conditional expression. This has the form expr1 ?
expr2 : expr3. If expr1 is true, the value of the expres-
sion is expr2, otherwise it is expr3. Only one of expr2
and expr3 is evaluated.
= += -= *= /= %= ^=
Assignment. Both absolute assignment (var = value) and op-
erator-assignment (the other forms) are supported.
Control Statements
The control statements are as follows:
if (condition) statement [ else statement ]
while (condition) statement
do statement while (condition)
for (expr1; expr2; expr3) statement
for (var in array) statement
break
continue
delete array[index]
delete array
exit [ expression ]
{ statements }
switch (expression) {
case value|regex : statement
...
[ default: statement ]
}
I/O Statements
The input/output statements are as follows:
close(file [, how]) Close an open file, pipe or coprocess. The op-
tional how should only be used when closing one
end of a two-way pipe to a coprocess. It must be
a string value, either "to" or "from".
getline Set $0 from the next input record; set NF, NR,
FNR, RT.
getline <file Set $0 from the next record of file; set NF, RT.
getline var Set var from the next input record; set NR, FNR,
RT.
getline var <file Set var from the next record of file; set RT.
command | getline [var]
Run command, piping the output either into $0 or
var, as above, and RT.
command |& getline [var]
Run command as a coprocess piping the output ei-
ther into $0 or var, as above, and RT. (The com-
mand can also be a socket. See the subsection
Special File Names, below.)
fflush([file]) Flush any buffers associated with the open output
file or pipe file. If file is missing or if it
is the null string, then flush all open output
files and pipes.
next Stop processing the current input record. Read
the next input record and start processing over
with the first pattern in the AWK program. Upon
reaching the end of the input data, execute any
END rule(s).
nextfile Stop processing the current input file. The next
input record read comes from the next input file.
Update FILENAME and ARGIND, reset FNR to 1, and
start processing over with the first pattern in
the AWK program. Upon reaching the end of the
input data, execute any ENDFILE and END rule(s).
print Print the current record. The output record is
terminated with the value of ORS.
print expr-list Print expressions. Each expression is separated
by the value of OFS. The output record is termi-
nated with the value of ORS.
print expr-list >file Print expressions on file. Each expression is
separated by the value of OFS. The output record
is terminated with the value of ORS.
printf fmt, expr-list Format and print.
printf fmt, expr-list >file
Format and print on file.
system(cmd-line) Execute the command cmd-line, and return the exit
status. (This may not be available on non-POSIX
systems.) See https://www.gnu.org/soft-
ware/gawk/manual/html_node/I_002fO-Func-
tions.html#I_002fO-Functions for the full details
on the exit status.
Additional output redirections are allowed for print and printf.
print ... >> file
Append output to the file.
print ... | command
Write on a pipe.
print ... |& command
Send data to a coprocess or socket. (See also the subsection
Special File Names, below.)
The getline command returns 1 on success, zero on end of file, and -1
on an error. If the errno(3) value indicates that the I/O operation
may be retried, and PROCINFO["input", "RETRY"] is set, then -2 is re-
turned instead of -1, and further calls to getline may be attempted.
Upon an error, ERRNO is set to a string describing the problem.
NOTE: Failure in opening a two-way socket results in a non-fatal error
being returned to the calling function. If using a pipe, coprocess, or
socket to getline, or from print or printf within a loop, you must use
close() to create new instances of the command or socket. AWK does not
automatically close pipes, sockets, or coprocesses when they return
EOF.
The AWK versions of the printf statement and sprintf() function are
similar to those of C. For details, see https://www.gnu.org/soft-
ware/gawk/manual/html_node/Printf.html.
Special File Names
When doing I/O redirection from either print or printf into a file, or
via getline from a file, gawk recognizes certain special filenames in-
ternally. These filenames allow access to open file descriptors inher-
ited from gawk's parent process (usually the shell). These file names
may also be used on the command line to name data files. The filenames
are:
- The standard input.
/dev/stdin The standard input.
/dev/stdout The standard output.
/dev/stderr The standard error output.
/dev/fd/n The file associated with the open file descriptor n.
The following special filenames may be used with the |& coprocess oper-
ator for creating TCP/IP network connections:
/inet/tcp/lport/rhost/rport
/inet4/tcp/lport/rhost/rport
/inet6/tcp/lport/rhost/rport
Files for a TCP/IP connection on local port lport to remote host
rhost on remote port rport. Use a port of 0 to have the system
pick a port. Use /inet4 to force an IPv4 connection, and /inet6
to force an IPv6 connection. Plain /inet uses the system de-
fault (most likely IPv4). Usable only with the |& two-way I/O
operator.
/inet/udp/lport/rhost/rport
/inet4/udp/lport/rhost/rport
/inet6/udp/lport/rhost/rport
Similar, but use UDP/IP instead of TCP/IP.
Numeric Functions
AWK has the following built-in arithmetic functions:
atan2(y, x) Return the arctangent of y/x in radians.
cos(expr) Return the cosine of expr, which is in radians.
exp(expr) The exponential function.
int(expr) Truncate to integer.
log(expr) The natural logarithm function.
rand() Return a random number N, between zero and one, such that
0 ≤ N < 1.
sin(expr) Return the sine of expr, which is in radians.
sqrt(expr) Return the square root of expr.
srand([expr]) Use expr as the new seed for the random number generator.
If no expr is provided, use the time of day. Return the
previous seed for the random number generator.
String Functions
Gawk has the following built-in string functions; details are provided
in https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/String-Functions.
asort(s [, d [, how] ]) Return the number of elements in the source ar-
ray s. Sort the contents of s using gawk's
normal rules for comparing values, and replace
the indices of the sorted values s with sequen-
tial integers starting with 1. If the optional
destination array d is specified, first dupli-
cate s into d, and then sort d, leaving the in-
dices of the source array s unchanged. The op-
tional string how controls the direction and
the comparison mode. Valid values for how are
described in https://www.gnu.org/soft-
ware/gawk/manual/html_node/String-Func-
tions.html#String-Functions. s and d are al-
lowed to be the same array; this only makes
sense when supplying the third argument as
well.
asorti(s [, d [, how] ])
Return the number of elements in the source ar-
ray s. The behavior is the same as that of
asort(), except that the array indices are used
for sorting, not the array values. When done,
the array is indexed numerically, and the val-
ues are those of the original indices. The
original values are lost; thus provide a second
array if you wish to preserve the original.
The purpose of the optional string how is the
same as for asort(). Here too, s and d are al-
lowed to be the same array; this only makes
sense when supplying the third argument as
well.
gensub(r, s, h [, t]) Search the target string t for matches of the
regular expression r. If h is a string begin-
ning with g or G, then replace all matches of r
with s. Otherwise, h is a number indicating
which match of r to replace. If t is not sup-
plied, use $0 instead. Within the replacement
text s, the sequence \n, where n is a digit
from 1 to 9, may be used to indicate just the
text that matched the n'th parenthesized subex-
pression. The sequence \0 represents the en-
tire matched text, as does the character &.
Unlike sub() and gsub(), the modified string is
returned as the result of the function, and the
original target string is not changed.
gsub(r, s [, t]) For each substring matching the regular expres-
sion r in the string t, substitute the string
s, and return the number of substitutions. If
t is not supplied, use $0. An & in the re-
placement text is replaced with the text that
was actually matched. Use \& to get a literal
&. (This must be typed as "\\&"; see
https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/man-
ual/html_node/Gory-Details.html#Gory-Details
for a fuller discussion of the rules for amper-
sands and backslashes in the replacement text
of sub(), gsub(), and gensub().)
index(s, t) Return the index of the string t in the string
s, or zero if t is not present. (This implies
that character indices start at one.)
length([s]) Return the length of the string s, or the
length of $0 if s is not supplied. With an ar-
ray argument, length() returns the number of
elements in the array.
match(s, r [, a]) Return the position in s where the regular ex-
pression r occurs, or zero if r is not present,
and set the values of RSTART and RLENGTH. Note
that the argument order is the same as for the
~ operator: str ~ re. See
https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/man-
ual/html_node/String-Functions.html#String-
Functions for a description of how the array a
is filled if it is provided.
patsplit(s, a [, r [, seps] ])
Split the string s into the array a and the
separators array seps on the regular expression
r, and return the number of fields. Element
values are the portions of s that matched r.
The value of seps[i] is the possibly null sepa-
rator that appeared after a[i]. The value of
seps[0] is the possibly null leading separator.
If r is omitted, FPAT is used instead. The ar-
rays a and seps are cleared first. Splitting
behaves identically to field splitting with
FPAT.
split(s, a [, r [, seps] ])
Split the string s into the array a and the
separators array seps on the regular expression
r, and return the number of fields. If r is
omitted, FS is used instead. The arrays a and
seps are cleared first. seps[i] is the field
separator matched by r between a[i] and a[i+1].
Splitting behaves identically to field split-
ting.
sprintf(fmt, expr-list) Print expr-list according to fmt, and return
the resulting string.
strtonum(str) Examine str, and return its numeric value. If
str begins with a leading 0, treat it as an oc-
tal number. If str begins with a leading 0x or
0X, treat it as a hexadecimal number. Other-
wise, assume it is a decimal number.
sub(r, s [, t]) Just like gsub(), but replace only the first
matching substring. Return either zero or one.
substr(s, i [, n]) Return the at most n-character substring of s
starting at i. If n is omitted, use the rest
of s.
tolower(str) Return a copy of the string str, with all the
uppercase characters in str translated to their
corresponding lowercase counterparts. Non-al-
phabetic characters are left unchanged.
toupper(str) Return a copy of the string str, with all the
lowercase characters in str translated to their
corresponding uppercase counterparts. Non-al-
phabetic characters are left unchanged.
Gawk is multibyte aware. This means that index(), length(), substr()
and match() all work in terms of characters, not bytes.
Time Functions
Gawk provides the following functions for obtaining time stamps and
formatting them. Details are provided in https://www.gnu.org/soft-
ware/gawk/manual/html_node/Time-Functions.
mktime(datespec [, utc-flag])
Turn datespec into a time stamp of the same form as returned
by systime(), and return the result. If utc-flag is present
and is non-zero or non-null, the time is assumed to be in the
UTC time zone; otherwise, the time is assumed to be in the
local time zone. If datespec does not contain enough ele-
ments or if the resulting time is out of range, mktime() re-
turns -1. See https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/man-
ual/html_node/Time-Functions.html#Time-Functions for the de-
tails of datespec.
strftime([format [, timestamp[, utc-flag]]])
Format timestamp according to the specification in format.
If utc-flag is present and is non-zero or non-null, the re-
sult is in UTC, otherwise the result is in local time. The
timestamp should be of the same form as returned by sys-
time(). If timestamp is missing, the current time of day is
used. If format is missing, a default format equivalent to
the output of date(1) is used. The default format is avail-
able in PROCINFO["strftime"]. See the specification for the
strftime() function in ISO C for the format conversions that
are guaranteed to be available.
systime() Return the current time of day as the number of seconds since
the Epoch (1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC on POSIX systems).
Bit Manipulations Functions
Gawk supplies the following bit manipulation functions. They work by
converting double-precision floating point values to uintmax_t inte-
gers, doing the operation, and then converting the result back to
floating point. Passing negative operands to any of these functions
causes a fatal error.
The functions are:
and(v1, v2 [, ...]) Return the bitwise AND of the values provided in
the argument list. There must be at least two.
compl(val) Return the bitwise complement of val.
lshift(val, count) Return the value of val, shifted left by count
bits.
or(v1, v2 [, ...]) Return the bitwise OR of the values provided in the
argument list. There must be at least two.
rshift(val, count) Return the value of val, shifted right by count
bits.
xor(v1, v2 [, ...]) Return the bitwise XOR of the values provided in
the argument list. There must be at least two.
Type Functions
The following functions provide type related information about their
arguments.
isarray(x) Return true if x is an array, false otherwise.
typeof(x) Return a string indicating the type of x. The string will
be one of "array", "number", "regexp", "string", "strnum",
"unassigned", or "undefined".
Internationalization Functions
The following functions may be used from within your AWK program for
translating strings at run-time. For full details, see
https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/I18N-Func-
tions.html#I18N-Functions.
bindtextdomain(directory [, domain])
Specify the directory where gawk looks for the .gmo files, in
case they will not or cannot be placed in the ``standard'' loca-
tions. It returns the directory where domain is ``bound.''
The default domain is the value of TEXTDOMAIN. If directory is
the null string (""), then bindtextdomain() returns the current
binding for the given domain.
dcgettext(string [, domain [, category]])
Return the translation of string in text domain domain for lo-
cale category category. The default value for domain is the
current value of TEXTDOMAIN. The default value for category is
"LC_MESSAGES".
dcngettext(string1, string2, number [, domain [, category]])
Return the plural form used for number of the translation of
string1 and string2 in text domain domain for locale category
category. The default value for domain is the current value of
TEXTDOMAIN. The default value for category is "LC_MESSAGES".
Boolean Valued Functions
You can create special Boolean-typed values; see the manual for how
they work and why they exist.
mkbool(expression)
Based on the boolean value of expression return either a true
value or a false value. True values have numeric value one.
False values have numeric value zero.
USER-DEFINED FUNCTIONS
Functions in AWK are defined as follows:
function name(parameter list) { statements }
Functions execute when they are called from within expressions in ei-
ther patterns or actions. Actual parameters supplied in the function
call are used to instantiate the formal parameters declared in the
function. Arrays are passed by reference, other variables are passed
by value.
Local variables are declared as extra parameters in the parameter list.
The convention is to separate local variables from real parameters by
extra spaces in the parameter list. For example:
function f(p, q, a, b) # a and b are local
{
...
}
/abc/ { ... ; f(1, 2) ; ... }
The left parenthesis in a function call is required to immediately fol-
low the function name, without any intervening whitespace. This re-
striction does not apply to the built-in functions listed above.
Functions may call each other and may be recursive. Function parame-
ters used as local variables are initialized to the null string and the
number zero upon function invocation.
Use return expr to return a value from a function. The return value is
undefined if no value is provided, or if the function returns by “fall-
ing off” the end.
Functions may be called indirectly. To do this, assign the name of the
function to be called, as a string, to a variable. Then use the vari-
able as if it were the name of a function, prefixed with an @ sign,
like so:
function myfunc()
{
print "myfunc called"
...
}
{ ...
the_func = "myfunc"
@the_func() # call through the_func to myfunc
...
}
If --lint has been provided, gawk warns about calls to undefined func-
tions at parse time, instead of at run time. Calling an undefined
function at run time is a fatal error.
DYNAMICALLY LOADING NEW FUNCTIONS
You can dynamically add new functions written in C or C++ to the run-
ning gawk interpreter with the @load statement. The full details are
beyond the scope of this manual page; see https://www.gnu.org/soft-
ware/gawk/manual/html_node/Dynamic-Extensions.html#Dynamic-Extensions.
SIGNALS
The gawk profiler accepts two signals. SIGUSR1 causes it to dump a
profile and function call stack to the profile file, which is either
awkprof.out, or whatever file was named with the --profile option. It
then continues to run. SIGHUP causes gawk to dump the profile and
function call stack and then exit.
INTERNATIONALIZATION
String constants are sequences of characters enclosed in double quotes.
In non-English speaking environments, it is possible to mark strings in
the AWK program as requiring translation to the local natural language.
Such strings are marked in the AWK program with a leading underscore
(“_”). For example,
gawk 'BEGIN { print "hello, world" }'
always prints hello, world. But,
gawk 'BEGIN { print _"hello, world" }'
might print bonjour, monde in France. See https://www.gnu.org/soft-
ware/gawk/manual/html_node/Internationalization.html#Internationaliza-
tion for the steps involved in producing and running a localizable AWK
program.
GNU EXTENSIONS
Gawk has a too-large number of extensions to POSIX awk. They are de-
scribed in https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/man-
ual/html_node/POSIX_002fGNU.html. All the extensions can be disabled
by invoking gawk with the --traditional or --posix options.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The AWKPATH environment variable can be used to provide a list of di-
rectories that gawk searches when looking for files named via the -f,
--file, -i and --include options, and the @include directive. If the
initial search fails, the path is searched again after appending .awk
to the filename.
The AWKLIBPATH environment variable can be used to provide a list of
directories that gawk searches when looking for files named via the -l
and --load options.
The GAWK_PERSIST_FILE environment variable, if present, specifies a
file to use as the backing store for persistent memory. This is an ex-
perimental feature. See GAWK: Effective AWK Programming for the de-
tails.
The GAWK_READ_TIMEOUT environment variable can be used to specify a
timeout in milliseconds for reading input from a terminal, pipe or two-
way communication including sockets.
For connection to a remote host via socket, GAWK_SOCK_RETRIES controls
the number of retries, and GAWK_MSEC_SLEEP the interval between re-
tries. The interval is in milliseconds. On systems that do not support
usleep(3), the value is rounded up to an integral number of seconds.
If POSIXLY_CORRECT exists in the environment, then gawk behaves exactly
as if --posix had been specified on the command line. If --lint has
been specified, gawk issues a warning message to this effect.
EXIT STATUS
If the exit statement is used with a value, then gawk exits with the
numeric value given to it.
Otherwise, if there were no problems during execution, gawk exits with
the value of the C constant EXIT_SUCCESS. This is usually zero.
If an error occurs, gawk exits with the value of the C constant
EXIT_FAILURE. This is usually one.
If gawk exits because of a fatal error, the exit status is 2. On non-
POSIX systems, this value may be mapped to EXIT_FAILURE.
VERSION INFORMATION
This man page documents gawk, version 5.2.
AUTHORS
The original version of UNIX awk was designed and implemented by Alfred
Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan of Bell Laboratories. Brian
Kernighan continues to maintain and enhance it.
Paul Rubin and Jay Fenlason, of the Free Software Foundation, wrote
gawk, to be compatible with the original version of awk distributed in
Seventh Edition UNIX. John Woods contributed a number of bug fixes.
David Trueman, with contributions from Arnold Robbins, made gawk com-
patible with the new version of UNIX awk. Arnold Robbins is the cur-
rent maintainer.
See GAWK: Effective AWK Programming for a full list of the contributors
to gawk and its documentation.
See the README file in the gawk distribution for up-to-date information
about maintainers and which ports are currently supported.
BUG REPORTS
If you find a bug in gawk, please use the gawkbug(1) program to report
it.
Full instructions for reporting a bug are provided in
https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/Bugs.html. Please
carefully read and follow the instructions given there. This will make
bug reporting and resolution much easier for everyone involved. Re-
ally.
BUGS
The -F option is not necessary given the command line variable assign-
ment feature; it remains only for backwards compatibility.
This manual page is too long; gawk has too many features.
SEE ALSO
egrep(1), sed(1), gawkbug(1), printf(3), and strftime(3).
The AWK Programming Language, Alfred V. Aho, Brian W. Kernighan, Peter
J. Weinberger, Addison-Wesley, 1988. ISBN 0-201-07981-X.
GAWK: Effective AWK Programming, Edition 5.2, shipped with the gawk
source. The current version of this document is available online at
https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual.
The GNU gettext documentation, available online at
https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext.
EXAMPLES
Print and sort the login names of all users:
BEGIN { FS = ":" }
{ print $1 | "sort" }
Count lines in a file:
{ nlines++ }
END { print nlines }
Precede each line by its number in the file:
{ print FNR, $0 }
Concatenate and line number (a variation on a theme):
{ print NR, $0 }
Run an external command for particular lines of data:
tail -f access_log |
awk '/myhome.html/ { system("nmap " $1 ">> logdir/myhome.html") }'
COPYING PERMISSIONS
Copyright © 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999,
2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014,
2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 Free Software Founda-
tion, Inc.
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
manual page provided the copyright notice and this permission notice
are preserved on all copies.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
manual page under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that
the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
permission notice identical to this one.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this man-
ual page into another language, under the above conditions for modified
versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a trans-
lation approved by the Foundation.
Free Software Foundation Jun 09 2022 GAWK(1)
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