GAWK(1) Utility Commands GAWK(1)

GAWK
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 . . .

pgawk [ POSIX or GNU style options ] −f program-file [ −− ] file . . .

pgawk [ POSIX or GNU style options ] [ −− ] program-text file . . .
DESCRIPTION
Gawk is the GNU Project’s implementation of the AWK programming language. It conforms to the def-
inition 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, with the additional features
found in the System V Release 4 version of UNIX awk. Gawk also provides more recent Bell Labora-
tories awk extensions, and a number of GNU-specific extensions.
Pgawk is the profiling version of gawk. It is identical in every way to gawk, except that programs run
more slowly, and it automatically produces an execution profile in the file awkprof.out when done.
See the −−profile option, below.
The command line consists of options to gawk itself, the AWK program text (if not supplied via the −f
or −−file options), and values to be made available in the ARGC and ARGV pre-defined AWK vari-
ables.
OPTION FORMAT
Gawk options may be either traditional POSIX 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.
Following the POSIX standard, gawk-specific options are supplied via arguments to the −W option.
Multiple −W options may be supplied Each −W option has a corresponding long option, as detailed
below. Arguments 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 abbrevi-
ated, as long as the abbreviation remains unique.
OPTIONS
Gawk accepts the following options, listed by frequency.
−F fs
−−field-separator fs
Use fs for the input field separator (the value of the FS predefined variable).
−v var=val
−−assign var=val
Assign the value val to the variable var, before execution of the program begins. Such vari-
able values are available to the BEGIN block of an AWK program.
−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 (or −−file) options may be used.
−mf NNN
−mr NNN
Set various memory limits to the value NNN . The f flag sets the maximum number of fields,
and the r flag sets the maximum record size. These two flags and the −m option are from an
earlier version of the Bell Laboratories research version of UNIX awk. They are ignored by
gawk, since gawk has no pre-defined limits.
−W compat
−W traditional

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−−compat
−−traditional
Run in compatibility mode. In compatibility mode, gawk behaves identically to UNIX awk;
none of the GNU-specific extensions are recognized. The use of −−traditional is preferred
over the other forms of this option. See GNU EXTENSIONS, below, for more information.
−W copyleft
−W copyright
−−copyleft
−−copyright
Print the short version of the GNU copyright information message on the standard output and
exit successfully.
−W dump-variables[=file]
−−dump-variables[=file]
Print a sorted list of global variables, their types and final values to file. If no file is provided,
gawk uses a file named awkvars.out in the current directory.
Having a list of all the global variables is a good way to look for typographical errors in your
programs. You would also use this option if you have a large program with a lot of functions,
and you want to be sure that your functions don’t inadvertently use global variables that you
meant to be local. (This is a particularly easy mistake to make with simple variable names
like i, j, and so on.)
−W exec file
−−exec file
Similar to −f, however, this is option is the last one processed. 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.
−W gen−po
−−gen−po
Scan and parse the AWK program, and generate a GNU .po format file on standard output with
entries for all localizable strings in the program. The program itself is not executed. See the
GNU gettext distribution for more information on .po files.
−W help
−W usage
−−help
−−usage
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.)
−W lint[=value]
−−lint[=value]
Provide warnings about constructs that are dubious or non-portable to other AWK implementa-
tions. With an optional argument of fatal, lint warnings become fatal errors. This may be
drastic, but its use will certainly encourage the development of cleaner AWK programs. With
an optional argument of invalid, only warnings about things that are actually invalid are
issued. (This is not fully implemented yet.)
−W lint−old
−−lint−old
Provide warnings about constructs that are not portable to the original version of Unix awk.
−W non−decimal−data
−−non−decimal−data
Recognize octal and hexadecimal values in input data. Use this option with great caution!
−W posix
−−posix
This turns on compatibility mode, with the following additional restrictions:
• \x escape sequences are not recognized.

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• Only space and tab act as field separators when FS is set to a single space, newline does not.
• You cannot continue lines after ? and :.
• The synonym func for the keyword function is not recognized.
• The operators ** and **= cannot be used in place of ˆ and ˆ=.
• The fflush() function is not available.
−W profile[=prof_file]
−−profile[=prof_file]
Send profiling data to prof_file. The default is awkprof.out. When run with gawk, the profile
is just a “pretty printed” version of the program. When run with pgawk, the profile contains
execution counts of each statement in the program in the left margin and function call counts
for each user-defined function.
−W re−interval
−−re−interval
Enable the use of interval expressions in regular expression matching (see Regular Expres-
sions, below). Interval expressions were not traditionally available in the AWK language. The
POSIX standard added them, to make awk and egrep consistent with each other. However,
their use is likely to break old AWK programs, so gawk only provides them if they are
requested with this option, or when −−posix is specified.
−W source program-text
−−source program-text
Use program-text as AWK program source code. This option allows the easy intermixing of
library functions (used via the −f and −−file options) with source code entered on the com-
mand line. It is intended primarily for medium to large AWK programs used in shell scripts.
−W use−lc−numeric
−−use−lc−numeric
This forces gawk to use the locale’s decimal point character when parsing input data.
Although the POSIX standard requires this behavior, and gawk does so when −−posix is in
effect, the default is to follow traditional behavior and use a period as the decimal point, even
in locales where the period is not the decimal point character. This option overrides the
default behavior, without the full draconian strictness of the −−posix option.
−W version
−−version
Print version information for this particular copy of gawk on the standard output. This is use-
ful mainly for knowing if the current copy of gawk on your system is up to date with respect
to whatever the Free Software Foundation is distributing. This is also useful when reporting
bugs. (Per the GNU Coding Standards, these options cause an immediate, successful exit.)
−− Signal the end of options. This is useful to allow further arguments to the AWK program itself
to start with a “−”. This provides consistency with the argument parsing convention used by
most other POSIX programs.
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 pro-
gram in the ARGV array for processing. This is particularly useful for running AWK programs via the
“#!” executable interpreter mechanism.
AWK PROGRAM EXECUTION
An AWK program consists of a sequence of pattern-action statements and optional function definitions.
pattern { action statements }
function name(parameter list) { statements }
Gawk first reads the program source from the program-file(s) if specified, 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 com-
mand line source texts had been concatenated together. This is useful for building libraries of AWK
functions, without having to include them in each new AWK program that uses them. It also provides
the ability to mix library functions with command line programs.
The environment variable AWKPATH specifies a search path to use when finding source files named
with the −f option. If this variable does not exist, the default path is ".:/usr/local/share/awk". (The

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actual directory may vary, depending upon how gawk was built and installed.) If a file name given to
the −f option contains a “/” character, no path search is performed.
Gawk executes AWK programs in the following order. First, all variable assignments specified via the
−v option are performed. Next, gawk compiles the program into an internal form. Then, gawk
executes the code in the BEGIN block(s) (if any), and then proceeds to read each file named in the
ARGV array. 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 block(s) have been run.)
Command line variable assignment is most useful for dynamically assigning values to the variables
AWK uses to control how input is broken into fields and records. It is also useful for controlling state if
multiple passes are needed over a single data file.
If the value of a particular element of ARGV is empty (""), gawk skips over it.
For each record in the input, gawk tests to see if it matches any pattern in the AWK program. For each
pattern that the record matches, the associated action is executed. 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 block(s) (if any).
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. AWK also has one
dimensional arrays; arrays with multiple dimensions may be simulated. Several pre-defined variables
are set as a program runs; these are described as needed and summarized 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. If RS is any single character, that character separates
records. Otherwise, RS is a regular expression. Text in the input that matches this regular expression
separates the record. However, in compatibility mode, only the first character of its string value is used
for separating records. If RS is set to the null string, then records are separated by blank lines. When
RS is set to the null string, the newline character always acts as a field separator, in addition to what-
ever value FS may have.
Fields
As each input record is read, gawk splits the record into fields, using the value of the FS variable as the
field separator. If FS is a single character, fields are separated by that character. If FS is the null string,
then each individual character becomes a separate field. Otherwise, FS is expected to be a full regular
expression. In the special case that FS is a single space, fields are separated by runs of spaces and/or
tabs and/or newlines. (But see the section POSIX COMPATIBILITY, below). NOTE: The value of
IGNORECASE (see below) also affects how fields are split when FS is a regular expression, and how
records are separated when RS is a regular expression.
If the FIELDWIDTHS variable is set to a space separated list of numbers, each field is expected to
have fixed width, and gawk splits up the record using the specified widths. The value of FS is ignored.
Assigning a new value to FS overrides the use of FIELDWIDTHS, and restores the default behavior.
Each field in the input record may be referenced by its position, $1, $2, and so on. $0 is the whole
record. Fields need not be referenced by constants:
n=5
print $n
prints the fifth field in the input record.
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 value, and causes the value of $0 to be recomputed, 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. Sim-
ilarly, 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:
ARGC The number of command line arguments (does not include options to gawk, or the
program source).

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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.
Dynamically changing the contents of ARGV can control the files used for data.
BINMODE On non-POSIX systems, specifies use of “binary” mode for all file I/O. Numeric
values of 1, 2, or 3, specify that input files, output files, or all files, respectively,
should use binary I/O. String values of "r", or "w" specify that input files, or out-
put files, respectively, should use binary I/O. String values of "rw" or "wr" specify
that all files should use binary I/O. Any other string value is treated as "rw", but
generates a warning message.
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 element being the value of that variable (e.g., ENV-
IRON["HOME"] might be /home/arnold). Changing this array does not affect the
environment seen by programs which gawk spawns via redirection or the system()
function.
ERRNO If a system error occurs either doing a redirection for getline, during a read for get-
line, or during a close(), then ERRNO will contain a string describing the error.
The value is subject to translation in non-English locales.
FIELDWIDTHS A white-space separated list of fieldwidths. 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.
FILENAME The name of the current input file. If no files are specified on the command line, the
value of FILENAME is “−”. However, FILENAME is undefined inside the
BEGIN block (unless set by getline).
FNR The input record number in the current input file.
FS The input field separator, a space by default. See Fields, above.
IGNORECASE Controls the case-sensitivity of all regular expression and string operations. If
IGNORECASE has a non-zero value, then string comparisons and pattern match-
ing in rules, field splitting with FS, record separating with RS, regular expression
matching with ˜ and !˜, and the gensub(), gsub(), index(), match(), split(), and
sub() built-in functions all ignore case when doing regular expression operations.
NOTE: Array subscripting is not affected. However, the asort() and asorti() func-
tions are affected.
Thus, if IGNORECASE is not equal to zero, /aB/ matches all of the strings "ab",
"aB", "Ab", and "AB". As with all AWK variables, the initial value of IGNORE-
CASE is zero, so all regular expression and string operations are normally case-sen-
sitive. Under Unix, the full ISO 8859-1 Latin-1 character set is used when ignoring
case. As of gawk 3.1.4, the case equivalencies are fully locale-aware, based on the
C <ctype.h> facilities such as isalpha(), and toupper().
LINT Provides dynamic control of the −−lint option from within an AWK program. When
true, gawk prints lint warnings. When false, it does not. When assigned the string
value "fatal", lint warnings become fatal errors, exactly like −−lint=fatal. Any
other true value just prints warnings.
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.
PROCINFO The elements of this array provide access to information about the running AWK
program. On some systems, there may be elements in the array, "group1" through
"groupn" for some n, which is the number of supplementary groups that the
process has. Use the in operator to test for these elements. The following elements
are guaranteed to be available:
PROCINFO["egid"] the value of the getegid(2) system call.
PROCINFO["euid"] the value of the geteuid(2) system call.
PROCINFO["FS"] "FS" if field splitting with FS is in effect, or "FIELD-
WIDTHS" if field splitting with FIELDWIDTHS is in
effect.

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PROCINFO["gid"] the value of the getgid(2) system call.

PROCINFO["pgrpid"] the process group ID of the current process.
PROCINFO["pid"] the process ID of the current process.
PROCINFO["ppid"] the parent process ID of the current process.
PROCINFO["uid"] the value of the getuid(2) system call.
PROCINFO["version"]
The version of gawk. This is available from version 3.1.4
and later.
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. (This implies
that character indices start at one.)
RLENGTH The length of the string matched by match(); −1 if no match.
SUBSEP The character used to separate multiple subscripts in array elements, by default
"\034".
TEXTDOMAIN The text domain of the AWK program; used to find the localized 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 arrays. 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 associative, 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.
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.
Variable Typing And Conversion
Variables and fields may be (floating point) numbers, or strings, or both. How the value of a variable is
interpreted depends upon its context. If used in a numeric expression, 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 0 to it; to force it to be treated as a string, concatenate
it with the null string.
When a string must be converted to a number, the conversion is accomplished using strtod(3). A num-
ber is converted to a string by using the value of CONVFMT as a format string for sprintf (3), with the
numeric value of the variable as the argument. However, even though all numbers in AWK are floating-
point, integral values are always converted as integers. Thus, given
CONVFMT = "%2.2f"
a = 12
b = a ""
the variable b has a string value of "12" and not "12.00".
When operating in POSIX mode (such as with the −−posix command line option), beware that locale
settings may interfere with the way decimal numbers are treated: the decimal separator of the numbers
you are feeding to gawk must conform to what your locale would expect, be it a comma (,) or a period
(.).
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 ele-
ments and the elements of an array created by split() that are numeric strings. The basic idea is that

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user input, and only user input, that looks numeric, should be treated that way.
Uninitialized variables have the numeric value 0 and the string value "" (the null, or empty, string).
Octal and Hexadecimal Constants
Starting with version 3.1 of gawk , 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 ("). Within
strings, certain escape sequences are recognized, as in C. These are:
\\ A literal backslash.
\a The “alert” character; usually the ASCII BEL character.
\b backspace.
\f form-feed.
\n newline.
\r carriage return.
\t horizontal tab.
\v vertical tab.
\xhex digits
The character represented by the string of hexadecimal digits following the \x. As in ANSI C, all
following hexadecimal digits are considered part of the escape sequence. (This feature should
tell us something about language design by committee.) E.g., "\x1B" is the ASCII ESC (escape)
character.
\ddd The character represented by the 1-, 2-, or 3-digit sequence of octal digits. E.g., "\033" is the
ASCII ESC (escape) character.
\c The literal character c.
The escape sequences may also be used inside constant regular expressions (e.g., /[ \t\f\n\r\v]/ matches
whitespace characters).
In compatibility mode, the characters represented by octal and hexadecimal escape sequences are
treated literally when used in regular expression constants. Thus, /a\52b/ is equivalent to /a\*b/.
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 is executed 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. Blank 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 “,”, {, ?, :, &&, or ||. Lines ending in do or else also have their statements automati-
cally continued on the following line. In other cases, a line can be continued by ending it with a “\”, in
which case the newline will be ignored.
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
/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
block. They are executed before any of the input is read. Similarly, all the END blocks are merged,

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and executed when all the input is exhausted (or when an exit statement is executed). BEGIN and
END patterns cannot be combined with other patterns in pattern expressions. BEGIN and END pat-
terns cannot have missing action parts.
For /regular expression/ patterns, the associated statement is executed for each input record that
matches the regular expression. Regular expressions are the same as those in egrep(1), and are summa-
rized below.
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 test-
ing is the second pattern, otherwise it is the third. Only one of the second and third patterns is evalu-
ated.
The pattern1, pattern2 form of an expression is called a range pattern. It matches all input records
starting with a record that matches pattern1, and continuing until a record that matches pattern2, inclu-
sive. It does not combine with any other sort of pattern expression.
Regular Expressions
Regular expressions are the extended kind found in egrep. They are composed of characters as follows:
c matches the non-metacharacter c.
\c matches the literal character c.
. matches any character including newline.
ˆ matches the beginning of a string.
$ matches the end of a string.
[abc. . .] character list, matches any of the characters abc. . ..
[ˆabc. . .] negated character list, matches any character except abc. . ..
r1|r2 alternation: matches either r1 or r2.
r1r2 concatenation: matches r1, and then r2.
r+ matches one or more r’s.
r* matches zero or more r’s.
r? matches zero or one r’s.
(r) grouping: matches r.
r{n}
r{n,}
r{n,m} One or two numbers inside braces denote an interval expression. If there is one number in
the braces, the preceding regular expression r is repeated n times. If there are two numbers
separated by a comma, r is repeated n to m times. If there is one number followed by a
comma, then r is repeated at least n times.
Interval expressions are only available if either −−posix or −−re−interval is specified on
the command line.
\y matches the empty string at either the beginning or the end of a word.
\B matches the empty string within a word.
\< matches the empty string at the beginning of a word.
\> matches the empty string at the end of a word.
\w matches any word-constituent character (letter, digit, or underscore).
\W matches any character that is not word-constituent.
\‘ matches the empty string at the beginning of a buffer (string).
\’ matches the empty string at the end of a buffer.
The escape sequences that are valid in string constants (see below) are also valid in regular expressions.
Character classes are a feature introduced in the POSIX standard. A character class is a special nota-
tion for describing lists of characters that have a specific attribute, but where the actual characters them-
selves can vary from country to country and/or from character set to character set. For example, the
notion of what is an alphabetic character differs in the USA and in France.
A character class is only valid in a regular expression inside the brackets of a character list. Character

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classes consist of [:, a keyword denoting the class, and :]. The character classes defined by the POSIX
standard are:
[:alnum:] Alphanumeric characters.
[:alpha:] Alphabetic characters.
[:blank:] Space or tab characters.
[:cntrl:] Control characters.
[:digit:] Numeric characters.
[:graph:] Characters that are both printable and visible. (A space is printable, but not visible, while
an a is both.)
[:lower:] Lower-case alphabetic characters.
[:print:] Printable characters (characters that are not control characters.)
[:punct:] Punctuation characters (characters that are not letter, digits, control characters, or space
characters).
[:space:] Space characters (such as space, tab, and formfeed, to name a few).
[:upper:] Upper-case alphabetic characters.
[:xdigit:] Characters that are hexadecimal digits.
For example, before the POSIX standard, to match alphanumeric characters, you would have had to
write /[A−Za−z0−9]/. If your character set had other alphabetic characters in it, this would not match
them, and if your character set collated differently from ASCII, this might not even match the ASCII
alphanumeric characters. With the POSIX character classes, you can write /[[:alnum:]]/, and this
matches the alphabetic and numeric characters in your character set, no matter what it is.
Two additional special sequences can appear in character lists. These apply to non-ASCII character
sets, which can have single symbols (called collating elements) that are represented with more than one
character, as well as several characters that are equivalent for collating, or sorting, purposes. (E.g., in
French, a plain “e” and a grave-accented “è” are equivalent.)
Collating Symbols
A collating symbol is a multi-character collating element enclosed in [. and .]. For example,
if ch is a collating element, then [[.ch.]] is a regular expression that matches this collating ele-
ment, while [ch] is a regular expression that matches either c or h.
Equivalence Classes
An equivalence class is a locale-specific name for a list of characters that are equivalent. The
name is enclosed in [= and =]. For example, the name e might be used to represent all of “e,”
“é,” and “è.” In this case, [[=e=]] is a regular expression that matches any of e, é, or è.
These features are very valuable in non-English speaking locales. The library functions that gawk uses
for regular expression matching currently only recognize POSIX character classes; they do not recog-
nize collating symbols or equivalence classes.
The \y, \B, \<, \>, \w, \W, \‘, and \’ operators are specific to gawk; they are extensions based on facili-
ties in the GNU regular expression libraries.
The various command line options control how gawk interprets characters in regular expressions.
No options
In the default case, gawk provide all the facilities of POSIX regular expressions and the GNU
regular expression operators described above. However, interval expressions are not sup-
ported.
−−posix
Only POSIX regular expressions are supported, the GNU operators are not special. (E.g., \w
matches a literal w). Interval expressions are allowed.
−−traditional
Traditional Unix awk regular expressions are matched. The GNU operators are not special,
interval expressions are not available, and neither are the POSIX character classes ([[:alnum:]]
and so on). Characters described by octal and hexadecimal escape sequences are treated

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literally, even if they represent regular expression metacharacters.

−−re−interval
Allow interval expressions in regular expressions, even if −−traditional has been provided.
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
input/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.
ˆ Exponentiation (** may also be used, and **= for the assignment operator).
+−! 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. NOTE: Do not use a constant regular expres-
sion (/foo/) on the left-hand side of a ˜ or !˜. Only use one on the right-hand side. The
expression /foo/ ˜ exp has the same meaning as (($0 ˜ /foo/) ˜ exp). This is usually not
what was intended.
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 expression is expr2, otherwise it is expr3. Only one of expr2 and expr3
is evaluated.
= += −=
*= /= %= ˆ= Assignment. Both absolute assignment (var = value) and operator-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 }

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I/O Statements
The input/output statements are as follows:

close(file [, how]) Close file, pipe or co-process. The optional how should only be used when closing
one end of a two-way pipe to a co-process. It must be a string value, either "to"
or "from".
getline Set $0 from next input record; set NF, NR, FNR.
getline < file Set $0 from next record of file; set NF.
getline var Set var from next input record; set NR, FNR.
getline var < file Set var from next record of file.
command | getline [var]
Run command piping the output either into $0 or var, as above.
command |& getline [var]
Run command as a co-process piping the output either into $0 or var, as above.
Co-processes are a gawk extension. (command can also be a socket. See the sub-
section Special File Names, below.)
next Stop processing the current input record. The next input record is read and pro-
cessing starts over with the first pattern in the AWK program. If the end of the
input data is reached, the END block(s), if any, are executed.
nextfile Stop processing the current input file. The next input record read comes from the
next input file. FILENAME and ARGIND are updated, FNR is reset to 1, and
processing starts over with the first pattern in the AWK program. If the end of the
input data is reached, the END block(s), if any, are executed.
print Prints the current record. The output record is terminated with the value of the
ORS variable.
print expr-list Prints expressions. Each expression is separated by the value of the OFS variable.
The output record is terminated with the value of the ORS variable.
print expr-list > file
Prints expressions on file. Each expression is separated by the value of the OFS
variable. The output record is terminated with the value of the ORS variable.
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 avail-
able on non-POSIX systems.)
fflush([file]) Flush any buffers associated with the open output file or pipe file. If file is miss-
ing, then standard output is flushed. If file is the null string, then all open output
files and pipes have their buffers flushed.
Additional output redirections are allowed for print and printf.
print . . . >> file
Appends output to the file.
print . . . | command
Writes on a pipe.
print . . . |& command
Sends data to a co-process or socket. (See also the subsection Special File Names, below.)
The getline command returns 0 on end of file and −1 on an error. Upon an error, ERRNO contains a
string describing the problem.
NOTE: If using a pipe, co-process, 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 co-processes when they return EOF.

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The printf Statement

The AWK versions of the printf statement and sprintf() function (see below) accept the following con-
version specification formats:
%c An ASCII character. If the argument used for %c is numeric, it is treated as a character and
printed. Otherwise, the argument is assumed to be a string, and the only first character of
that string is printed.
%d, %i A decimal number (the integer part).
%e, %E A floating point number of the form [−]d.dddddde[+ −]dd. The %E format uses E instead
of e.
%f, %F A floating point number of the form [−]ddd.dddddd. If the system library supports it, %F
is available as well. This is like %f, but uses capital letters for special “not a number” and
“infinity” values. If %F is not available, gawk uses %f.
%g, %G Use %e or %f conversion, whichever is shorter, with nonsignificant zeros suppressed. The
%G format uses %E instead of %e.
%o An unsigned octal number (also an integer).
%u An unsigned decimal number (again, an integer).
%s A character string.
%x, %X An unsigned hexadecimal number (an integer). The %X format uses ABCDEF instead of
abcdef.
%% A single % character; no argument is converted.
NOTE: When using the integer format-control letters for values that are outside the range of a C long
integer, gawk switches to the %0f format specifier. If −−lint is provided on the command line gawk
warns about this. Other versions of awk may print invalid values or do something else entirely.
Optional, additional parameters may lie between the % and the control letter:
count$ Use the count’th argument at this point in the formatting. This is called a positional specifier
and is intended primarily for use in translated versions of format strings, not in the original
text of an AWK program. It is a gawk extension.
− The expression should be left-justified within its field.
space For numeric conversions, prefix positive values with a space, and negative values with a minus
sign.
+ The plus sign, used before the width modifier (see below), says to always supply a sign for
numeric conversions, even if the data to be formatted is positive. The + overrides the space
modifier.
# Use an “alternate form” for certain control letters. For %o, supply a leading zero. For %x,
and %X, supply a leading 0x or 0X for a nonzero result. For %e, %E, %f and %F, the result
always contains a decimal point. For %g, and %G, trailing zeros are not removed from the
result.
0 A leading 0 (zero) acts as a flag, that indicates output should be padded with zeroes instead of
spaces. This applies even to non-numeric output formats. This flag only has an effect when
the field width is wider than the value to be printed.
width The field should be padded to this width. The field is normally padded with spaces. If the 0
flag has been used, it is padded with zeroes.
. prec A number that specifies the precision to use when printing. For the %e, %E, %f and %F,
formats, this specifies the number of digits you want printed to the right of the decimal point.
For the %g, and %G formats, it specifies the maximum number of significant digits. For the
%d, %o, %i, %u, %x, and %X formats, it specifies the minimum number of digits to print.
For %s, it specifies the maximum number of characters from the string that should be printed.
The dynamic width and prec capabilities of the ANSI C printf() routines are supported. A * in place of
either the width or prec specifications causes their values to be taken from the argument list to printf
or sprintf(). To use a positional specifier with a dynamic width or precision, supply the count$ after

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the * in the format string. For example, "%3$*2$.*1$s".

Special File Names
When doing I/O redirection from either print or printf into a file, or via getline from a file, gawk rec-
ognizes certain special filenames internally. These filenames allow access to open file descriptors
inherited 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:
/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.
These are particularly useful for error messages. For example:
print "You blew it!" > "/dev/stderr"
whereas you would otherwise have to use
print "You blew it!" | "cat 1>&2"
The following special filenames may be used with the |& co-process operator for creating TCP/IP net-
work connections.
/inet/tcp/lport/rhost/rport File for 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.
/inet/udp/lport/rhost/rport Similar, but use UDP/IP instead of TCP/IP.
/inet/raw/lport/rhost/rport Reserved for future use.
Other special filenames provide access to information about the running gawk process. These file-
names are now obsolete. Use the PROCINFO array to obtain the information they provide. The file-
names are:
/dev/pid Reading this file returns the process ID of the current process, in decimal, terminated with
a newline.
/dev/ppid Reading this file returns the parent process ID of the current process, in decimal, termi-
nated with a newline.
/dev/pgrpid
Reading this file returns the process group ID of the current process, in decimal, termi-
nated with a newline.
/dev/user Reading this file returns a single record terminated with a newline. The fields are sepa-
rated with spaces. $1 is the value of the getuid(2) system call, $2 is the value of the
geteuid(2) system call, $3 is the value of the getgid(2) system call, and $4 is the value of
the getegid(2) system call. If there are any additional fields, they are the group IDs
returned by getgroups(2). Multiple groups may not be supported on all systems.
Numeric Functions
AWK has the following built-in arithmetic functions:

atan2(y, x) Returns the arctangent of y/x in radians.

cos(expr) Returns the cosine of expr, which is in radians.
exp(expr) The exponential function.
int(expr) Truncates to integer.
log(expr) The natural logarithm function.
rand() Returns a random number N , between 0 and 1, such that 0 ≤ N < 1.
sin(expr) Returns the sine of expr, which is in radians.
sqrt(expr) The square root function.
srand([expr]) Uses expr as a new seed for the random number generator. If no expr is provided, the
time of day is used. The return value is the previous seed for the random number

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generator.
String Functions
Gawk has the following built-in string functions:

asort(s [, d]) Returns the number of elements in the source array s. The contents of s are
sorted using gawk’s normal rules for comparing values, and the indices of the
sorted values of s are replaced with sequential integers starting with 1. If the
optional destination array d is specified, then s is first duplicated into d, and
then d is sorted, leaving the indices of the source array s unchanged.
asorti(s [, d]) Returns the number of elements in the source array 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 values are those
of the original indices. The original values are lost; thus provide a second array
if you wish to preserve the original.
gensub(r, s, h [, t]) Search the target string t for matches of the regular expression r. If h is a string
beginning 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 supplied, $0 is used
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
subexpression. The sequence \0 represents the entire 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 expression 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 replacement text is replaced with the text that was actually
matched. Use \& to get a literal &. (This must be typed as "\\&"; see GAWK:
Effective AWK Programming for a fuller discussion of the rules for &’s and
backslashes in the replacement text of sub(), gsub(), and gensub().)
index(s, t) Returns the index of the string t in the string s, or 0 if t is not present. (This
implies that character indices start at one.)
length([s]) Returns the length of the string s, or the length of $0 if s is not supplied. Start-
ing with version 3.1.5, as a non-standard extension, with an array argument,
length() returns the number of elements in the array.
match(s, r [, a]) Returns the position in s where the regular expression r occurs, or 0 if r is not
present, and sets the values of RSTART and RLENGTH. Note that the argu-
ment order is the same as for the ˜ operator: str ˜ re. If array a is provided, a is
cleared and then elements 1 through n are filled with the portions of s that
match the corresponding parenthesized subexpression in r. The 0’th element of
a contains the portion of s matched by the entire regular expression r. Sub-
scripts a[n, "start"], and a[n, "length"] provide the starting index in the string
and length respectively, of each matching substring.
split(s, a [, r]) Splits the string s into the array a on the regular expression r, and returns the
number of fields. If r is omitted, FS is used instead. The array a is cleared first.
Splitting behaves identically to field splitting, described above.
sprintf( fmt, expr-list)
Prints expr-list according to fmt, and returns the resulting string.
strtonum(str) Examines str, and returns its numeric value. If str begins with a leading 0, str-
tonum() assumes that str is an octal number. If str begins with a leading 0x or
0X, strtonum() assumes that str is a hexadecimal number.
sub(r, s [, t]) Just like gsub(), but only the first matching substring is replaced.
substr(s, i [, n]) Returns the at most n-character substring of s starting at i. If n is omitted, the
rest of s is used.
tolower(str) Returns a copy of the string str, with all the upper-case characters in str trans-
lated to their corresponding lower-case counterparts. Non-alphabetic characters

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are left unchanged.

toupper(str) Returns a copy of the string str, with all the lower-case characters in str trans-
lated to their corresponding upper-case counterparts. Non-alphabetic characters
are left unchanged.
As of version 3.1.5, gawk is multibyte aware. This means that index(), length(), substr() and match()
all work in terms of characters, not bytes.
Time Functions
Since one of the primary uses of AWK programs is processing log files that contain time stamp infor-
mation, gawk provides the following functions for obtaining time stamps and formatting them.

mktime(datespec)
Turns datespec into a time stamp of the same form as returned by systime(). The datespec
is a string of the form YYYY MM DD HH MM SS[ DST]. The contents of the string are six
or seven numbers representing respectively the full year including century, the month from 1
to 12, the day of the month from 1 to 31, the hour of the day from 0 to 23, the minute from 0
to 59, and the second from 0 to 60, and an optional daylight saving flag. The values of these
numbers need not be within the ranges specified; for example, an hour of −1 means 1 hour
before midnight. The origin-zero Gregorian calendar is assumed, with year 0 preceding year
1 and year −1 preceding year 0. The time is assumed to be in the local timezone. If the day-
light saving flag is positive, the time is assumed to be daylight saving time; if zero, the time
is assumed to be standard time; and if negative (the default), mktime() attempts to determine
whether daylight saving time is in effect for the specified time. If datespec does not contain
enough elements or if the resulting time is out of range, mktime() returns −1.
strftime([format [, timestamp[, utc-flag]]])
Formats timestamp according to the specification in format. If utc-flag is present and is non-
zero or non-null, the result is in UTC, otherwise the result is in local time. The timestamp
should be of the same form as returned by systime(). 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. See the specification for the strftime() function in ANSI C for the format conver-
sions that are guaranteed to be available.
systime() Returns 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
Starting with version 3.1 of gawk, the following bit manipulation functions are available. They work
by converting double-precision floating point values to uintmax_t integers, doing the operation, and
then converting the result back to floating point. The functions are:
and(v1, v2) Return the bitwise AND of the values provided by v1 and v2.
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 by v1 and v2.
rshift(val, count) Return the value of val, shifted right by count bits.
xor(v1, v2) Return the bitwise XOR of the values provided by v1 and v2.

Internationalization Functions
Starting with version 3.1 of gawk, the following functions may be used from within your AWK pro-
gram for translating strings at run-time. For full details, see GAWK: Effective AWK Programming.
bindtextdomain(directory [, domain])
Specifies the directory where gawk looks for the .mo files, in case they will not or cannot be
placed in the ‘‘standard’’ locations (e.g., during testing). 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.

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dcgettext(string [, domain [, category]])

Returns the translation of string in text domain domain for locale category category. The
default value for domain is the current value of TEXTDOMAIN. The default value for cate-
gory is "LC_MESSAGES".
If you supply a value for category, it must be a string equal to one of the known locale cate-
gories described in GAWK: Effective AWK Programming. You must also supply a text domain.
Use TEXTDOMAIN if you want to use the current domain.
dcngettext(string1 , string2 , number [, domain [, category]])
Returns 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".
If you supply a value for category, it must be a string equal to one of the known locale cate-
gories described in GAWK: Effective AWK Programming. You must also supply a text domain.
Use TEXTDOMAIN if you want to use the current domain.
USER-DEFINED FUNCTIONS
Functions in AWK are defined as follows:
function name(parameter list) { statements }
Functions are executed when they are called from within expressions in either 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.
Since functions were not originally part of the AWK language, the provision for local variables is rather
clumsy: They 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 follow the function name, without any
intervening white space. This avoids a syntactic ambiguity with the concatenation operator. This
restriction does not apply to the built-in functions listed above.
Functions may call each other and may be recursive. Function parameters 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 pro-
vided, or if the function returns by “falling off” the end.
If −−lint has been provided, gawk warns about calls to undefined functions at parse time, instead of at
run time. Calling an undefined function at run time is a fatal error.
The word func may be used in place of function.
DYNAMICALLY LOADING NEW FUNCTIONS
Beginning with version 3.1 of gawk, you can dynamically add new built-in functions to the running
gawk interpreter. The full details are beyond the scope of this manual page; see GAWK: Effective AWK
Programming for the details.

extension(object, function)
Dynamically link the shared object file named by object, and invoke function in that object,
to perform initialization. These should both be provided as strings. Returns the value
returned by function.
This function is provided and documented in GAWK: Effective AWK Programming, but everything
about this feature is likely to change eventually. We STRONGLY recommend that you do not use
this feature for anything that you aren’t willing to redo.

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SIGNALS
pgawk 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 con-
tinues to run. SIGHUP causes pgawk to dump the profile and function call stack and then exit.
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") }’
INTERNATIONALIZATION
String constants are sequences of characters enclosed in double quotes. In non-English speaking envi-
ronments, it is possible to mark strings in the AWK program as requiring translation to the native natu-
ral language. Such strings are marked in the AWK program with a leading underscore (“_”). For exam-
ple,

gawk ’BEGIN { print "hello, world" }’

always prints hello, world. But,

gawk ’BEGIN { print _"hello, world" }’

might print bonjour, monde in France.

There are several steps involved in producing and running a localizable AWK program.
1. Add a BEGIN action to assign a value to the TEXTDOMAIN variable to set the text domain to a
name associated with your program.

BEGIN { TEXTDOMAIN = "myprog" }

This allows gawk to find the .mo file associated with your program. Without this step, gawk uses the
messages text domain, which likely does not contain translations for your program.
2. Mark all strings that should be translated with leading underscores.
3. If necessary, use the dcgettext() and/or bindtextdomain() functions in your program, as appropri-
ate.
4. Run gawk −−gen−po −f myprog.awk > myprog.po to generate a .po file for your program.
5. Provide appropriate translations, and build and install the corresponding .mo files.
The internationalization features are described in full detail in GAWK: Effective AWK Programming.

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POSIX COMPATIBILITY
A primary goal for gawk is compatibility with the POSIX standard, as well as with the latest version of
UNIX awk. To this end, gawk incorporates the following user visible features which are not described
in the AWK book, but are part of the Bell Laboratories version of awk, and are in the POSIX standard.
The book indicates that command line variable assignment happens when awk would otherwise open
the argument as a file, which is after the BEGIN block is executed. However, in earlier implementa-
tions, when such an assignment appeared before any file names, the assignment would happen before
the BEGIN block was run. Applications came to depend on this “feature.” When awk was changed to
match its documentation, the −v option for assigning variables before program execution was added to
accommodate applications that depended upon the old behavior. (This feature was agreed upon by both
the Bell Laboratories and the GNU developers.)
The −W option for implementation specific features is from the POSIX standard.
When processing arguments, gawk uses the special option “−−” to signal the end of arguments. In
compatibility mode, it warns about but otherwise ignores undefined options. In normal operation, such
arguments are passed on to the AWK program for it to process.
The AWK book does not define the return value of srand(). The POSIX standard has it return the seed it
was using, to allow keeping track of random number sequences. Therefore srand() in gawk also
returns its current seed.
Other new features are: The use of multiple −f options (from MKS awk); the ENVIRON array; the \a,
and \v escape sequences (done originally in gawk and fed back into the Bell Laboratories version); the
tolower() and toupper() built-in functions (from the Bell Laboratories version); and the ANSI C con-
version specifications in printf (done first in the Bell Laboratories version).
HISTORICAL FEATURES
There are two features of historical AWK implementations that gawk supports. First, it is possible to
call the length() built-in function not only with no argument, but even without parentheses! Thus,
a = length # Holy Algol 60, Batman!
is the same as either of
a = length()
a = length($0)
This feature is marked as “deprecated” in the POSIX standard, and gawk issues a warning about its use
if −−lint is specified on the command line.
The other feature is the use of either the continue or the break statements outside the body of a while,
for, or do loop. Traditional AWK implementations have treated such usage as equivalent to the next
statement. Gawk supports this usage if −−traditional has been specified.
GNU EXTENSIONS
Gawk has a number of extensions to POSIX awk. They are described in this section. All the extensions
described here can be disabled by invoking gawk with the −−traditional or −−posix options.
The following features of gawk are not available in POSIX awk.
• No path search is performed for files named via the −f option. Therefore the AWKPATH environ-
ment variable is not special.
• The \x escape sequence. (Disabled with −−posix.)
• The fflush() function. (Disabled with −−posix.)
• The ability to continue lines after ? and :. (Disabled with −−posix.)
• Octal and hexadecimal constants in AWK programs.
• The ARGIND, BINMODE, ERRNO, LINT, RT and TEXTDOMAIN variables are not special.
• The IGNORECASE variable and its side-effects are not available.
• The FIELDWIDTHS variable and fixed-width field splitting.
• The PROCINFO array is not available.

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• The use of RS as a regular expression.

• The special file names available for I/O redirection are not recognized.
• The |& operator for creating co-processes.
• The ability to split out individual characters using the null string as the value of FS, and as the third
argument to split().
• The optional second argument to the close() function.
• The optional third argument to the match() function.
• The ability to use positional specifiers with printf and sprintf().
• The ability to pass an array to length().
• The use of delete array to delete the entire contents of an array.
• The use of nextfile to abandon processing of the current input file.
• The and(), asort(), asorti(), bindtextdomain(), compl(), dcgettext(), dcngettext(), gensub(),
lshift(), mktime(), or(), rshift(), strftime(), strtonum(), systime() and xor() functions.
• Localizable strings.
• Adding new built-in functions dynamically with the extension() function.
The AWK book does not define the return value of the close() function. Gawk’s close() returns the
value from fclose(3), or pclose(3), when closing an output file or pipe, respectively. It returns the
process’s exit status when closing an input pipe. The return value is −1 if the named file, pipe or co-
process was not opened with a redirection.
When gawk is invoked with the −−traditional option, if the fs argument to the −F option is “t”, then
FS is set to the tab character. Note that typing gawk −F\t . . . simply causes the shell to quote the “t,”
and does not pass “\t” to the −F option. Since this is a rather ugly special case, it is not the default
behavior. This behavior also does not occur if −−posix has been specified. To really get a tab charac-
ter as the field separator, it is best to use single quotes: gawk −F’\t’ . . ..
If gawk is configured with the −−enable−switch option to the configure command, then it accepts an
additional control-flow statement:
switch (expression) {
case value|regex : statement
...
[ default: statement ]
}
If gawk is configured with the −−disable−directories-fatal option, then it will silently skip directories
named on the command line. Otherwise, it will do so only if invoked with the −−traditional option.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The AWKPATH environment variable can be used to provide a list of directories that gawk searches
when looking for files named via the −f and −−file options.
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.
SEE ALSO
egrep(1), getpid(2), getppid(2), getpgrp(2), getuid(2), geteuid(2), getgid(2), getegid(2), getgroups(2)
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 3.0, published by the Free Software Foundation, 2001.
The current version of this document is available online at http://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/man-
ual.
BUGS
The −F option is not necessary given the command line variable assignment feature; it remains only for
backwards compatibility.

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Syntactically invalid single character programs tend to overflow the parse stack, generating a rather
unhelpful message. Such programs are surprisingly difficult to diagnose in the completely general
case, and the effort to do so really is not worth it.
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 compatible with the new
version of UNIX awk. Arnold Robbins is the current maintainer.
The initial DOS port was done by Conrad Kwok and Scott Garfinkle. Scott Deifik is the current DOS
maintainer. Pat Rankin did the port to VMS, and Michal Jaegermann did the port to the Atari ST. The
port to OS/2 was done by Kai Uwe Rommel, with contributions and help from Darrel Hankerson. Juan
M. Guerrero now maintains the OS/2 port. Fred Fish supplied support for the Amiga, and Martin
Brown provided the BeOS port. Stephen Davies provided the original Tandem port, and Matthew
Woehlke provided changes for Tandem’s POSIX-compliant systems.
VERSION INFORMATION
This man page documents gawk, version 3.1.6.
BUG REPORTS
If you find a bug in gawk, please send electronic mail to [email protected]. Please include your
operating system and its revision, the version of gawk (from gawk −−version), what C compiler you
used to compile it, and a test program and data that are as small as possible for reproducing the prob-
lem.
Before sending a bug report, please do the following things. First, verify that you have the latest ver-
sion of gawk. Many bugs (usually subtle ones) are fixed at each release, and if yours is out of date, the
problem may already have been solved. Second, please see if setting the environment variable
LC_ALL to LC_ALL=C causes things to behave as you expect. If so, it’s a locale issue, and may or
may not really be a bug. Finally, please read this man page and the reference manual carefully to be
sure that what you think is a bug really is, instead of just a quirk in the language.
Whatever you do, do NOT post a bug report in comp.lang.awk. While the gawk developers occasion-
ally read this newsgroup, posting bug reports there is an unreliable way to report bugs. Instead, please
use the electronic mail addresses given above.
If you’re using a GNU/Linux system or BSD-based system, you may wish to submit a bug report to the
vendor of your distribution. That’s fine, but please send a copy to the official email address as well,
since there’s no guarantee that the bug will be forwarded to the gawk maintainer.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Brian Kernighan of Bell Laboratories provided valuable assistance during testing and debugging. We
thank him.
COPYING PERMISSIONS
Copyright © 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004,
2005, 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual page provided the copy-
right 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 manual page into another language,
under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a
translation approved by the Foundation.

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IGAWK(1) Utility Commands IGAWK(1)

IGAWK
NAME
igawk − gawk with include files
SYNOPSIS
igawk [ all gawk options ] −f program-file [ −− ] file ...
igawk [ all gawk options ] [ −− ] program-text file ...
DESCRIPTION
Igawk is a simple shell script that adds the ability to have ‘‘include files’’ to gawk(1).
AWK programs for igawk are the same as for gawk, except that, in addition, you may have lines like

@include getopt.awk

in your program to include the file getopt.awk from either the current directory or one of the other
directories in the search path.
OPTIONS
See gawk(1) for a full description of the AWK language and the options that gawk supports.
EXAMPLES
cat << EOF > test.awk
@include getopt.awk

BEGIN {
while (getopt(ARGC, ARGV, "am:q") != −1)
...
}
EOF

igawk −f test.awk
SEE ALSO
gawk(1)
Effective AWK Programming, Edition 1.0, published by the Free Software Foundation, 1995.
AUTHOR
Arnold Robbins ([email protected]).

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GAWK
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 . . .

pgawk [ POSIX or GNU style options ] −f program-file [ −− ] file . . .

pgawk [ POSIX or GNU style options ] [ −− ] program-text file . . .
DESCRIPTION
Gawk is the GNU Project’s implementation of the AWK programming language. It conforms to the def-
inition 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, with the additional features
found in the System V Release 4 version of UNIX awk. Gawk also provides more recent Bell Labora-
tories awk extensions, and a number of GNU-specific extensions.
Pgawk is the profiling version of gawk. It is identical in every way to gawk, except that programs run
more slowly, and it automatically produces an execution profile in the file awkprof.out when done.
See the −−profile option, below.
The command line consists of options to gawk itself, the AWK program text (if not supplied via the −f
or −−file options), and values to be made available in the ARGC and ARGV pre-defined AWK vari-
ables.
OPTION FORMAT
Gawk options may be either traditional POSIX 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.
Following the POSIX standard, gawk-specific options are supplied via arguments to the −W option.
Multiple −W options may be supplied Each −W option has a corresponding long option, as detailed
below. Arguments 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 abbrevi-
ated, as long as the abbreviation remains unique.
OPTIONS
Gawk accepts the following options, listed by frequency.
−F fs
−−field-separator fs
Use fs for the input field separator (the value of the FS predefined variable).
−v var=val
−−assign var=val
Assign the value val to the variable var, before execution of the program begins. Such vari-
able values are available to the BEGIN block of an AWK program.
−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 (or −−file) options may be used.
−mf NNN
−mr NNN
Set various memory limits to the value NNN . The f flag sets the maximum number of fields,
and the r flag sets the maximum record size. These two flags and the −m option are from an
earlier version of the Bell Laboratories research version of UNIX awk. They are ignored by
gawk, since gawk has no pre-defined limits.
−W compat
−W traditional

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−−compat
−−traditional
Run in compatibility mode. In compatibility mode, gawk behaves identically to UNIX awk;
none of the GNU-specific extensions are recognized. The use of −−traditional is preferred
over the other forms of this option. See GNU EXTENSIONS, below, for more information.
−W copyleft
−W copyright
−−copyleft
−−copyright
Print the short version of the GNU copyright information message on the standard output and
exit successfully.
−W dump-variables[=file]
−−dump-variables[=file]
Print a sorted list of global variables, their types and final values to file. If no file is provided,
gawk uses a file named awkvars.out in the current directory.
Having a list of all the global variables is a good way to look for typographical errors in your
programs. You would also use this option if you have a large program with a lot of functions,
and you want to be sure that your functions don’t inadvertently use global variables that you
meant to be local. (This is a particularly easy mistake to make with simple variable names
like i, j, and so on.)
−W exec file
−−exec file
Similar to −f, however, this is option is the last one processed. 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.
−W gen−po
−−gen−po
Scan and parse the AWK program, and generate a GNU .po format file on standard output with
entries for all localizable strings in the program. The program itself is not executed. See the
GNU gettext distribution for more information on .po files.
−W help
−W usage
−−help
−−usage
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.)
−W lint[=value]
−−lint[=value]
Provide warnings about constructs that are dubious or non-portable to other AWK implementa-
tions. With an optional argument of fatal, lint warnings become fatal errors. This may be
drastic, but its use will certainly encourage the development of cleaner AWK programs. With
an optional argument of invalid, only warnings about things that are actually invalid are
issued. (This is not fully implemented yet.)
−W lint−old
−−lint−old
Provide warnings about constructs that are not portable to the original version of Unix awk.
−W non−decimal−data
−−non−decimal−data
Recognize octal and hexadecimal values in input data. Use this option with great caution!
−W posix
−−posix
This turns on compatibility mode, with the following additional restrictions:
• \x escape sequences are not recognized.

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• Only space and tab act as field separators when FS is set to a single space, newline does not.
• You cannot continue lines after ? and :.
• The synonym func for the keyword function is not recognized.
• The operators ** and **= cannot be used in place of ˆ and ˆ=.
• The fflush() function is not available.
−W profile[=prof_file]
−−profile[=prof_file]
Send profiling data to prof_file. The default is awkprof.out. When run with gawk, the profile
is just a “pretty printed” version of the program. When run with pgawk, the profile contains
execution counts of each statement in the program in the left margin and function call counts
for each user-defined function.
−W re−interval
−−re−interval
Enable the use of interval expressions in regular expression matching (see Regular Expres-
sions, below). Interval expressions were not traditionally available in the AWK language. The
POSIX standard added them, to make awk and egrep consistent with each other. However,
their use is likely to break old AWK programs, so gawk only provides them if they are
requested with this option, or when −−posix is specified.
−W source program-text
−−source program-text
Use program-text as AWK program source code. This option allows the easy intermixing of
library functions (used via the −f and −−file options) with source code entered on the com-
mand line. It is intended primarily for medium to large AWK programs used in shell scripts.
−W use−lc−numeric
−−use−lc−numeric
This forces gawk to use the locale’s decimal point character when parsing input data.
Although the POSIX standard requires this behavior, and gawk does so when −−posix is in
effect, the default is to follow traditional behavior and use a period as the decimal point, even
in locales where the period is not the decimal point character. This option overrides the
default behavior, without the full draconian strictness of the −−posix option.
−W version
−−version
Print version information for this particular copy of gawk on the standard output. This is use-
ful mainly for knowing if the current copy of gawk on your system is up to date with respect
to whatever the Free Software Foundation is distributing. This is also useful when reporting
bugs. (Per the GNU Coding Standards, these options cause an immediate, successful exit.)
−− Signal the end of options. This is useful to allow further arguments to the AWK program itself
to start with a “−”. This provides consistency with the argument parsing convention used by
most other POSIX programs.
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 pro-
gram in the ARGV array for processing. This is particularly useful for running AWK programs via the
“#!” executable interpreter mechanism.
AWK PROGRAM EXECUTION
An AWK program consists of a sequence of pattern-action statements and optional function definitions.
pattern { action statements }
function name(parameter list) { statements }
Gawk first reads the program source from the program-file(s) if specified, 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 com-
mand line source texts had been concatenated together. This is useful for building libraries of AWK
functions, without having to include them in each new AWK program that uses them. It also provides
the ability to mix library functions with command line programs.
The environment variable AWKPATH specifies a search path to use when finding source files named
with the −f option. If this variable does not exist, the default path is ".:/usr/local/share/awk". (The

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actual directory may vary, depending upon how gawk was built and installed.) If a file name given to
the −f option contains a “/” character, no path search is performed.
Gawk executes AWK programs in the following order. First, all variable assignments specified via the
−v option are performed. Next, gawk compiles the program into an internal form. Then, gawk
executes the code in the BEGIN block(s) (if any), and then proceeds to read each file named in the
ARGV array. 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 block(s) have been run.)
Command line variable assignment is most useful for dynamically assigning values to the variables
AWK uses to control how input is broken into fields and records. It is also useful for controlling state if
multiple passes are needed over a single data file.
If the value of a particular element of ARGV is empty (""), gawk skips over it.
For each record in the input, gawk tests to see if it matches any pattern in the AWK program. For each
pattern that the record matches, the associated action is executed. 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 block(s) (if any).
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. AWK also has one
dimensional arrays; arrays with multiple dimensions may be simulated. Several pre-defined variables
are set as a program runs; these are described as needed and summarized 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. If RS is any single character, that character separates
records. Otherwise, RS is a regular expression. Text in the input that matches this regular expression
separates the record. However, in compatibility mode, only the first character of its string value is used
for separating records. If RS is set to the null string, then records are separated by blank lines. When
RS is set to the null string, the newline character always acts as a field separator, in addition to what-
ever value FS may have.
Fields
As each input record is read, gawk splits the record into fields, using the value of the FS variable as the
field separator. If FS is a single character, fields are separated by that character. If FS is the null string,
then each individual character becomes a separate field. Otherwise, FS is expected to be a full regular
expression. In the special case that FS is a single space, fields are separated by runs of spaces and/or
tabs and/or newlines. (But see the section POSIX COMPATIBILITY, below). NOTE: The value of
IGNORECASE (see below) also affects how fields are split when FS is a regular expression, and how
records are separated when RS is a regular expression.
If the FIELDWIDTHS variable is set to a space separated list of numbers, each field is expected to
have fixed width, and gawk splits up the record using the specified widths. The value of FS is ignored.
Assigning a new value to FS overrides the use of FIELDWIDTHS, and restores the default behavior.
Each field in the input record may be referenced by its position, $1, $2, and so on. $0 is the whole
record. Fields need not be referenced by constants:
n=5
print $n
prints the fifth field in the input record.
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 value, and causes the value of $0 to be recomputed, 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. Sim-
ilarly, 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:
ARGC The number of command line arguments (does not include options to gawk, or the
program source).

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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.
Dynamically changing the contents of ARGV can control the files used for data.
BINMODE On non-POSIX systems, specifies use of “binary” mode for all file I/O. Numeric
values of 1, 2, or 3, specify that input files, output files, or all files, respectively,
should use binary I/O. String values of "r", or "w" specify that input files, or out-
put files, respectively, should use binary I/O. String values of "rw" or "wr" specify
that all files should use binary I/O. Any other string value is treated as "rw", but
generates a warning message.
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 element being the value of that variable (e.g., ENV-
IRON["HOME"] might be /home/arnold). Changing this array does not affect the
environment seen by programs which gawk spawns via redirection or the system()
function.
ERRNO If a system error occurs either doing a redirection for getline, during a read for get-
line, or during a close(), then ERRNO will contain a string describing the error.
The value is subject to translation in non-English locales.
FIELDWIDTHS A white-space separated list of fieldwidths. 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.
FILENAME The name of the current input file. If no files are specified on the command line, the
value of FILENAME is “−”. However, FILENAME is undefined inside the
BEGIN block (unless set by getline).
FNR The input record number in the current input file.
FS The input field separator, a space by default. See Fields, above.
IGNORECASE Controls the case-sensitivity of all regular expression and string operations. If
IGNORECASE has a non-zero value, then string comparisons and pattern match-
ing in rules, field splitting with FS, record separating with RS, regular expression
matching with ˜ and !˜, and the gensub(), gsub(), index(), match(), split(), and
sub() built-in functions all ignore case when doing regular expression operations.
NOTE: Array subscripting is not affected. However, the asort() and asorti() func-
tions are affected.
Thus, if IGNORECASE is not equal to zero, /aB/ matches all of the strings "ab",
"aB", "Ab", and "AB". As with all AWK variables, the initial value of IGNORE-
CASE is zero, so all regular expression and string operations are normally case-sen-
sitive. Under Unix, the full ISO 8859-1 Latin-1 character set is used when ignoring
case. As of gawk 3.1.4, the case equivalencies are fully locale-aware, based on the
C <ctype.h> facilities such as isalpha(), and toupper().
LINT Provides dynamic control of the −−lint option from within an AWK program. When
true, gawk prints lint warnings. When false, it does not. When assigned the string
value "fatal", lint warnings become fatal errors, exactly like −−lint=fatal. Any
other true value just prints warnings.
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.
PROCINFO The elements of this array provide access to information about the running AWK
program. On some systems, there may be elements in the array, "group1" through
"groupn" for some n, which is the number of supplementary groups that the
process has. Use the in operator to test for these elements. The following elements
are guaranteed to be available:
PROCINFO["egid"] the value of the getegid(2) system call.
PROCINFO["euid"] the value of the geteuid(2) system call.
PROCINFO["FS"] "FS" if field splitting with FS is in effect, or "FIELD-
WIDTHS" if field splitting with FIELDWIDTHS is in
effect.

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GAWK(1) Utility Commands GAWK(1)

PROCINFO["gid"] the value of the getgid(2) system call.

PROCINFO["pgrpid"] the process group ID of the current process.
PROCINFO["pid"] the process ID of the current process.
PROCINFO["ppid"] the parent process ID of the current process.
PROCINFO["uid"] the value of the getuid(2) system call.
PROCINFO["version"]
The version of gawk. This is available from version 3.1.4
and later.
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. (This implies
that character indices start at one.)
RLENGTH The length of the string matched by match(); −1 if no match.
SUBSEP The character used to separate multiple subscripts in array elements, by default
"\034".
TEXTDOMAIN The text domain of the AWK program; used to find the localized 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 arrays. 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 associative, 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.
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.
Variable Typing And Conversion
Variables and fields may be (floating point) numbers, or strings, or both. How the value of a variable is
interpreted depends upon its context. If used in a numeric expression, 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 0 to it; to force it to be treated as a string, concatenate
it with the null string.
When a string must be converted to a number, the conversion is accomplished using strtod(3). A num-
ber is converted to a string by using the value of CONVFMT as a format string for sprintf (3), with the
numeric value of the variable as the argument. However, even though all numbers in AWK are floating-
point, integral values are always converted as integers. Thus, given
CONVFMT = "%2.2f"
a = 12
b = a ""
the variable b has a string value of "12" and not "12.00".
When operating in POSIX mode (such as with the −−posix command line option), beware that locale
settings may interfere with the way decimal numbers are treated: the decimal separator of the numbers
you are feeding to gawk must conform to what your locale would expect, be it a comma (,) or a period
(.).
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 ele-
ments and the elements of an array created by split() that are numeric strings. The basic idea is that

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user input, and only user input, that looks numeric, should be treated that way.
Uninitialized variables have the numeric value 0 and the string value "" (the null, or empty, string).
Octal and Hexadecimal Constants
Starting with version 3.1 of gawk , 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 ("). Within
strings, certain escape sequences are recognized, as in C. These are:
\\ A literal backslash.
\a The “alert” character; usually the ASCII BEL character.
\b backspace.
\f form-feed.
\n newline.
\r carriage return.
\t horizontal tab.
\v vertical tab.
\xhex digits
The character represented by the string of hexadecimal digits following the \x. As in ANSI C, all
following hexadecimal digits are considered part of the escape sequence. (This feature should
tell us something about language design by committee.) E.g., "\x1B" is the ASCII ESC (escape)
character.
\ddd The character represented by the 1-, 2-, or 3-digit sequence of octal digits. E.g., "\033" is the
ASCII ESC (escape) character.
\c The literal character c.
The escape sequences may also be used inside constant regular expressions (e.g., /[ \t\f\n\r\v]/ matches
whitespace characters).
In compatibility mode, the characters represented by octal and hexadecimal escape sequences are
treated literally when used in regular expression constants. Thus, /a\52b/ is equivalent to /a\*b/.
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 is executed 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. Blank 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 “,”, {, ?, :, &&, or ||. Lines ending in do or else also have their statements automati-
cally continued on the following line. In other cases, a line can be continued by ending it with a “\”, in
which case the newline will be ignored.
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
/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
block. They are executed before any of the input is read. Similarly, all the END blocks are merged,

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and executed when all the input is exhausted (or when an exit statement is executed). BEGIN and
END patterns cannot be combined with other patterns in pattern expressions. BEGIN and END pat-
terns cannot have missing action parts.
For /regular expression/ patterns, the associated statement is executed for each input record that
matches the regular expression. Regular expressions are the same as those in egrep(1), and are summa-
rized below.
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 test-
ing is the second pattern, otherwise it is the third. Only one of the second and third patterns is evalu-
ated.
The pattern1, pattern2 form of an expression is called a range pattern. It matches all input records
starting with a record that matches pattern1, and continuing until a record that matches pattern2, inclu-
sive. It does not combine with any other sort of pattern expression.
Regular Expressions
Regular expressions are the extended kind found in egrep. They are composed of characters as follows:
c matches the non-metacharacter c.
\c matches the literal character c.
. matches any character including newline.
ˆ matches the beginning of a string.
$ matches the end of a string.
[abc. . .] character list, matches any of the characters abc. . ..
[ˆabc. . .] negated character list, matches any character except abc. . ..
r1|r2 alternation: matches either r1 or r2.
r1r2 concatenation: matches r1, and then r2.
r+ matches one or more r’s.
r* matches zero or more r’s.
r? matches zero or one r’s.
(r) grouping: matches r.
r{n}
r{n,}
r{n,m} One or two numbers inside braces denote an interval expression. If there is one number in
the braces, the preceding regular expression r is repeated n times. If there are two numbers
separated by a comma, r is repeated n to m times. If there is one number followed by a
comma, then r is repeated at least n times.
Interval expressions are only available if either −−posix or −−re−interval is specified on
the command line.
\y matches the empty string at either the beginning or the end of a word.
\B matches the empty string within a word.
\< matches the empty string at the beginning of a word.
\> matches the empty string at the end of a word.
\w matches any word-constituent character (letter, digit, or underscore).
\W matches any character that is not word-constituent.
\‘ matches the empty string at the beginning of a buffer (string).
\’ matches the empty string at the end of a buffer.
The escape sequences that are valid in string constants (see below) are also valid in regular expressions.
Character classes are a feature introduced in the POSIX standard. A character class is a special nota-
tion for describing lists of characters that have a specific attribute, but where the actual characters them-
selves can vary from country to country and/or from character set to character set. For example, the
notion of what is an alphabetic character differs in the USA and in France.
A character class is only valid in a regular expression inside the brackets of a character list. Character

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classes consist of [:, a keyword denoting the class, and :]. The character classes defined by the POSIX
standard are:
[:alnum:] Alphanumeric characters.
[:alpha:] Alphabetic characters.
[:blank:] Space or tab characters.
[:cntrl:] Control characters.
[:digit:] Numeric characters.
[:graph:] Characters that are both printable and visible. (A space is printable, but not visible, while
an a is both.)
[:lower:] Lower-case alphabetic characters.
[:print:] Printable characters (characters that are not control characters.)
[:punct:] Punctuation characters (characters that are not letter, digits, control characters, or space
characters).
[:space:] Space characters (such as space, tab, and formfeed, to name a few).
[:upper:] Upper-case alphabetic characters.
[:xdigit:] Characters that are hexadecimal digits.
For example, before the POSIX standard, to match alphanumeric characters, you would have had to
write /[A−Za−z0−9]/. If your character set had other alphabetic characters in it, this would not match
them, and if your character set collated differently from ASCII, this might not even match the ASCII
alphanumeric characters. With the POSIX character classes, you can write /[[:alnum:]]/, and this
matches the alphabetic and numeric characters in your character set, no matter what it is.
Two additional special sequences can appear in character lists. These apply to non-ASCII character
sets, which can have single symbols (called collating elements) that are represented with more than one
character, as well as several characters that are equivalent for collating, or sorting, purposes. (E.g., in
French, a plain “e” and a grave-accented “è” are equivalent.)
Collating Symbols
A collating symbol is a multi-character collating element enclosed in [. and .]. For example,
if ch is a collating element, then [[.ch.]] is a regular expression that matches this collating ele-
ment, while [ch] is a regular expression that matches either c or h.
Equivalence Classes
An equivalence class is a locale-specific name for a list of characters that are equivalent. The
name is enclosed in [= and =]. For example, the name e might be used to represent all of “e,”
“é,” and “è.” In this case, [[=e=]] is a regular expression that matches any of e, é, or è.
These features are very valuable in non-English speaking locales. The library functions that gawk uses
for regular expression matching currently only recognize POSIX character classes; they do not recog-
nize collating symbols or equivalence classes.
The \y, \B, \<, \>, \w, \W, \‘, and \’ operators are specific to gawk; they are extensions based on facili-
ties in the GNU regular expression libraries.
The various command line options control how gawk interprets characters in regular expressions.
No options
In the default case, gawk provide all the facilities of POSIX regular expressions and the GNU
regular expression operators described above. However, interval expressions are not sup-
ported.
−−posix
Only POSIX regular expressions are supported, the GNU operators are not special. (E.g., \w
matches a literal w). Interval expressions are allowed.
−−traditional
Traditional Unix awk regular expressions are matched. The GNU operators are not special,
interval expressions are not available, and neither are the POSIX character classes ([[:alnum:]]
and so on). Characters described by octal and hexadecimal escape sequences are treated

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literally, even if they represent regular expression metacharacters.

−−re−interval
Allow interval expressions in regular expressions, even if −−traditional has been provided.
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
input/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.
ˆ Exponentiation (** may also be used, and **= for the assignment operator).
+−! 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. NOTE: Do not use a constant regular expres-
sion (/foo/) on the left-hand side of a ˜ or !˜. Only use one on the right-hand side. The
expression /foo/ ˜ exp has the same meaning as (($0 ˜ /foo/) ˜ exp). This is usually not
what was intended.
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 expression is expr2, otherwise it is expr3. Only one of expr2 and expr3
is evaluated.
= += −=
*= /= %= ˆ= Assignment. Both absolute assignment (var = value) and operator-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 }

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I/O Statements
The input/output statements are as follows:

close(file [, how]) Close file, pipe or co-process. The optional how should only be used when closing
one end of a two-way pipe to a co-process. It must be a string value, either "to"
or "from".
getline Set $0 from next input record; set NF, NR, FNR.
getline < file Set $0 from next record of file; set NF.
getline var Set var from next input record; set NR, FNR.
getline var < file Set var from next record of file.
command | getline [var]
Run command piping the output either into $0 or var, as above.
command |& getline [var]
Run command as a co-process piping the output either into $0 or var, as above.
Co-processes are a gawk extension. (command can also be a socket. See the sub-
section Special File Names, below.)
next Stop processing the current input record. The next input record is read and pro-
cessing starts over with the first pattern in the AWK program. If the end of the
input data is reached, the END block(s), if any, are executed.
nextfile Stop processing the current input file. The next input record read comes from the
next input file. FILENAME and ARGIND are updated, FNR is reset to 1, and
processing starts over with the first pattern in the AWK program. If the end of the
input data is reached, the END block(s), if any, are executed.
print Prints the current record. The output record is terminated with the value of the
ORS variable.
print expr-list Prints expressions. Each expression is separated by the value of the OFS variable.
The output record is terminated with the value of the ORS variable.
print expr-list > file
Prints expressions on file. Each expression is separated by the value of the OFS
variable. The output record is terminated with the value of the ORS variable.
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 avail-
able on non-POSIX systems.)
fflush([file]) Flush any buffers associated with the open output file or pipe file. If file is miss-
ing, then standard output is flushed. If file is the null string, then all open output
files and pipes have their buffers flushed.
Additional output redirections are allowed for print and printf.
print . . . >> file
Appends output to the file.
print . . . | command
Writes on a pipe.
print . . . |& command
Sends data to a co-process or socket. (See also the subsection Special File Names, below.)
The getline command returns 0 on end of file and −1 on an error. Upon an error, ERRNO contains a
string describing the problem.
NOTE: If using a pipe, co-process, 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 co-processes when they return EOF.

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The printf Statement

The AWK versions of the printf statement and sprintf() function (see below) accept the following con-
version specification formats:
%c An ASCII character. If the argument used for %c is numeric, it is treated as a character and
printed. Otherwise, the argument is assumed to be a string, and the only first character of
that string is printed.
%d, %i A decimal number (the integer part).
%e, %E A floating point number of the form [−]d.dddddde[+ −]dd. The %E format uses E instead
of e.
%f, %F A floating point number of the form [−]ddd.dddddd. If the system library supports it, %F
is available as well. This is like %f, but uses capital letters for special “not a number” and
“infinity” values. If %F is not available, gawk uses %f.
%g, %G Use %e or %f conversion, whichever is shorter, with nonsignificant zeros suppressed. The
%G format uses %E instead of %e.
%o An unsigned octal number (also an integer).
%u An unsigned decimal number (again, an integer).
%s A character string.
%x, %X An unsigned hexadecimal number (an integer). The %X format uses ABCDEF instead of
abcdef.
%% A single % character; no argument is converted.
NOTE: When using the integer format-control letters for values that are outside the range of a C long
integer, gawk switches to the %0f format specifier. If −−lint is provided on the command line gawk
warns about this. Other versions of awk may print invalid values or do something else entirely.
Optional, additional parameters may lie between the % and the control letter:
count$ Use the count’th argument at this point in the formatting. This is called a positional specifier
and is intended primarily for use in translated versions of format strings, not in the original
text of an AWK program. It is a gawk extension.
− The expression should be left-justified within its field.
space For numeric conversions, prefix positive values with a space, and negative values with a minus
sign.
+ The plus sign, used before the width modifier (see below), says to always supply a sign for
numeric conversions, even if the data to be formatted is positive. The + overrides the space
modifier.
# Use an “alternate form” for certain control letters. For %o, supply a leading zero. For %x,
and %X, supply a leading 0x or 0X for a nonzero result. For %e, %E, %f and %F, the result
always contains a decimal point. For %g, and %G, trailing zeros are not removed from the
result.
0 A leading 0 (zero) acts as a flag, that indicates output should be padded with zeroes instead of
spaces. This applies even to non-numeric output formats. This flag only has an effect when
the field width is wider than the value to be printed.
width The field should be padded to this width. The field is normally padded with spaces. If the 0
flag has been used, it is padded with zeroes.
. prec A number that specifies the precision to use when printing. For the %e, %E, %f and %F,
formats, this specifies the number of digits you want printed to the right of the decimal point.
For the %g, and %G formats, it specifies the maximum number of significant digits. For the
%d, %o, %i, %u, %x, and %X formats, it specifies the minimum number of digits to print.
For %s, it specifies the maximum number of characters from the string that should be printed.
The dynamic width and prec capabilities of the ANSI C printf() routines are supported. A * in place of
either the width or prec specifications causes their values to be taken from the argument list to printf
or sprintf(). To use a positional specifier with a dynamic width or precision, supply the count$ after

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the * in the format string. For example, "%3$*2$.*1$s".

Special File Names
When doing I/O redirection from either print or printf into a file, or via getline from a file, gawk rec-
ognizes certain special filenames internally. These filenames allow access to open file descriptors
inherited 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:
/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.
These are particularly useful for error messages. For example:
print "You blew it!" > "/dev/stderr"
whereas you would otherwise have to use
print "You blew it!" | "cat 1>&2"
The following special filenames may be used with the |& co-process operator for creating TCP/IP net-
work connections.
/inet/tcp/lport/rhost/rport File for 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.
/inet/udp/lport/rhost/rport Similar, but use UDP/IP instead of TCP/IP.
/inet/raw/lport/rhost/rport Reserved for future use.
Other special filenames provide access to information about the running gawk process. These file-
names are now obsolete. Use the PROCINFO array to obtain the information they provide. The file-
names are:
/dev/pid Reading this file returns the process ID of the current process, in decimal, terminated with
a newline.
/dev/ppid Reading this file returns the parent process ID of the current process, in decimal, termi-
nated with a newline.
/dev/pgrpid
Reading this file returns the process group ID of the current process, in decimal, termi-
nated with a newline.
/dev/user Reading this file returns a single record terminated with a newline. The fields are sepa-
rated with spaces. $1 is the value of the getuid(2) system call, $2 is the value of the
geteuid(2) system call, $3 is the value of the getgid(2) system call, and $4 is the value of
the getegid(2) system call. If there are any additional fields, they are the group IDs
returned by getgroups(2). Multiple groups may not be supported on all systems.
Numeric Functions
AWK has the following built-in arithmetic functions:

atan2(y, x) Returns the arctangent of y/x in radians.

cos(expr) Returns the cosine of expr, which is in radians.
exp(expr) The exponential function.
int(expr) Truncates to integer.
log(expr) The natural logarithm function.
rand() Returns a random number N , between 0 and 1, such that 0 ≤ N < 1.
sin(expr) Returns the sine of expr, which is in radians.
sqrt(expr) The square root function.
srand([expr]) Uses expr as a new seed for the random number generator. If no expr is provided, the
time of day is used. The return value is the previous seed for the random number

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generator.
String Functions
Gawk has the following built-in string functions:

asort(s [, d]) Returns the number of elements in the source array s. The contents of s are
sorted using gawk’s normal rules for comparing values, and the indices of the
sorted values of s are replaced with sequential integers starting with 1. If the
optional destination array d is specified, then s is first duplicated into d, and
then d is sorted, leaving the indices of the source array s unchanged.
asorti(s [, d]) Returns the number of elements in the source array 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 values are those
of the original indices. The original values are lost; thus provide a second array
if you wish to preserve the original.
gensub(r, s, h [, t]) Search the target string t for matches of the regular expression r. If h is a string
beginning 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 supplied, $0 is used
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
subexpression. The sequence \0 represents the entire 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 expression 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 replacement text is replaced with the text that was actually
matched. Use \& to get a literal &. (This must be typed as "\\&"; see GAWK:
Effective AWK Programming for a fuller discussion of the rules for &’s and
backslashes in the replacement text of sub(), gsub(), and gensub().)
index(s, t) Returns the index of the string t in the string s, or 0 if t is not present. (This
implies that character indices start at one.)
length([s]) Returns the length of the string s, or the length of $0 if s is not supplied. Start-
ing with version 3.1.5, as a non-standard extension, with an array argument,
length() returns the number of elements in the array.
match(s, r [, a]) Returns the position in s where the regular expression r occurs, or 0 if r is not
present, and sets the values of RSTART and RLENGTH. Note that the argu-
ment order is the same as for the ˜ operator: str ˜ re. If array a is provided, a is
cleared and then elements 1 through n are filled with the portions of s that
match the corresponding parenthesized subexpression in r. The 0’th element of
a contains the portion of s matched by the entire regular expression r. Sub-
scripts a[n, "start"], and a[n, "length"] provide the starting index in the string
and length respectively, of each matching substring.
split(s, a [, r]) Splits the string s into the array a on the regular expression r, and returns the
number of fields. If r is omitted, FS is used instead. The array a is cleared first.
Splitting behaves identically to field splitting, described above.
sprintf( fmt, expr-list)
Prints expr-list according to fmt, and returns the resulting string.
strtonum(str) Examines str, and returns its numeric value. If str begins with a leading 0, str-
tonum() assumes that str is an octal number. If str begins with a leading 0x or
0X, strtonum() assumes that str is a hexadecimal number.
sub(r, s [, t]) Just like gsub(), but only the first matching substring is replaced.
substr(s, i [, n]) Returns the at most n-character substring of s starting at i. If n is omitted, the
rest of s is used.
tolower(str) Returns a copy of the string str, with all the upper-case characters in str trans-
lated to their corresponding lower-case counterparts. Non-alphabetic characters

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are left unchanged.

toupper(str) Returns a copy of the string str, with all the lower-case characters in str trans-
lated to their corresponding upper-case counterparts. Non-alphabetic characters
are left unchanged.
As of version 3.1.5, gawk is multibyte aware. This means that index(), length(), substr() and match()
all work in terms of characters, not bytes.
Time Functions
Since one of the primary uses of AWK programs is processing log files that contain time stamp infor-
mation, gawk provides the following functions for obtaining time stamps and formatting them.

mktime(datespec)
Turns datespec into a time stamp of the same form as returned by systime(). The datespec
is a string of the form YYYY MM DD HH MM SS[ DST]. The contents of the string are six
or seven numbers representing respectively the full year including century, the month from 1
to 12, the day of the month from 1 to 31, the hour of the day from 0 to 23, the minute from 0
to 59, and the second from 0 to 60, and an optional daylight saving flag. The values of these
numbers need not be within the ranges specified; for example, an hour of −1 means 1 hour
before midnight. The origin-zero Gregorian calendar is assumed, with year 0 preceding year
1 and year −1 preceding year 0. The time is assumed to be in the local timezone. If the day-
light saving flag is positive, the time is assumed to be daylight saving time; if zero, the time
is assumed to be standard time; and if negative (the default), mktime() attempts to determine
whether daylight saving time is in effect for the specified time. If datespec does not contain
enough elements or if the resulting time is out of range, mktime() returns −1.
strftime([format [, timestamp[, utc-flag]]])
Formats timestamp according to the specification in format. If utc-flag is present and is non-
zero or non-null, the result is in UTC, otherwise the result is in local time. The timestamp
should be of the same form as returned by systime(). 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. See the specification for the strftime() function in ANSI C for the format conver-
sions that are guaranteed to be available.
systime() Returns 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
Starting with version 3.1 of gawk, the following bit manipulation functions are available. They work
by converting double-precision floating point values to uintmax_t integers, doing the operation, and
then converting the result back to floating point. The functions are:
and(v1, v2) Return the bitwise AND of the values provided by v1 and v2.
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 by v1 and v2.
rshift(val, count) Return the value of val, shifted right by count bits.
xor(v1, v2) Return the bitwise XOR of the values provided by v1 and v2.

Internationalization Functions
Starting with version 3.1 of gawk, the following functions may be used from within your AWK pro-
gram for translating strings at run-time. For full details, see GAWK: Effective AWK Programming.
bindtextdomain(directory [, domain])
Specifies the directory where gawk looks for the .mo files, in case they will not or cannot be
placed in the ‘‘standard’’ locations (e.g., during testing). 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.

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dcgettext(string [, domain [, category]])

Returns the translation of string in text domain domain for locale category category. The
default value for domain is the current value of TEXTDOMAIN. The default value for cate-
gory is "LC_MESSAGES".
If you supply a value for category, it must be a string equal to one of the known locale cate-
gories described in GAWK: Effective AWK Programming. You must also supply a text domain.
Use TEXTDOMAIN if you want to use the current domain.
dcngettext(string1 , string2 , number [, domain [, category]])
Returns 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".
If you supply a value for category, it must be a string equal to one of the known locale cate-
gories described in GAWK: Effective AWK Programming. You must also supply a text domain.
Use TEXTDOMAIN if you want to use the current domain.
USER-DEFINED FUNCTIONS
Functions in AWK are defined as follows:
function name(parameter list) { statements }
Functions are executed when they are called from within expressions in either 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.
Since functions were not originally part of the AWK language, the provision for local variables is rather
clumsy: They 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 follow the function name, without any
intervening white space. This avoids a syntactic ambiguity with the concatenation operator. This
restriction does not apply to the built-in functions listed above.
Functions may call each other and may be recursive. Function parameters 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 pro-
vided, or if the function returns by “falling off” the end.
If −−lint has been provided, gawk warns about calls to undefined functions at parse time, instead of at
run time. Calling an undefined function at run time is a fatal error.
The word func may be used in place of function.
DYNAMICALLY LOADING NEW FUNCTIONS
Beginning with version 3.1 of gawk, you can dynamically add new built-in functions to the running
gawk interpreter. The full details are beyond the scope of this manual page; see GAWK: Effective AWK
Programming for the details.

extension(object, function)
Dynamically link the shared object file named by object, and invoke function in that object,
to perform initialization. These should both be provided as strings. Returns the value
returned by function.
This function is provided and documented in GAWK: Effective AWK Programming, but everything
about this feature is likely to change eventually. We STRONGLY recommend that you do not use
this feature for anything that you aren’t willing to redo.

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SIGNALS
pgawk 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 con-
tinues to run. SIGHUP causes pgawk to dump the profile and function call stack and then exit.
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") }’
INTERNATIONALIZATION
String constants are sequences of characters enclosed in double quotes. In non-English speaking envi-
ronments, it is possible to mark strings in the AWK program as requiring translation to the native natu-
ral language. Such strings are marked in the AWK program with a leading underscore (“_”). For exam-
ple,

gawk ’BEGIN { print "hello, world" }’

always prints hello, world. But,

gawk ’BEGIN { print _"hello, world" }’

might print bonjour, monde in France.

There are several steps involved in producing and running a localizable AWK program.
1. Add a BEGIN action to assign a value to the TEXTDOMAIN variable to set the text domain to a
name associated with your program.

BEGIN { TEXTDOMAIN = "myprog" }

This allows gawk to find the .mo file associated with your program. Without this step, gawk uses the
messages text domain, which likely does not contain translations for your program.
2. Mark all strings that should be translated with leading underscores.
3. If necessary, use the dcgettext() and/or bindtextdomain() functions in your program, as appropri-
ate.
4. Run gawk −−gen−po −f myprog.awk > myprog.po to generate a .po file for your program.
5. Provide appropriate translations, and build and install the corresponding .mo files.
The internationalization features are described in full detail in GAWK: Effective AWK Programming.

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POSIX COMPATIBILITY
A primary goal for gawk is compatibility with the POSIX standard, as well as with the latest version of
UNIX awk. To this end, gawk incorporates the following user visible features which are not described
in the AWK book, but are part of the Bell Laboratories version of awk, and are in the POSIX standard.
The book indicates that command line variable assignment happens when awk would otherwise open
the argument as a file, which is after the BEGIN block is executed. However, in earlier implementa-
tions, when such an assignment appeared before any file names, the assignment would happen before
the BEGIN block was run. Applications came to depend on this “feature.” When awk was changed to
match its documentation, the −v option for assigning variables before program execution was added to
accommodate applications that depended upon the old behavior. (This feature was agreed upon by both
the Bell Laboratories and the GNU developers.)
The −W option for implementation specific features is from the POSIX standard.
When processing arguments, gawk uses the special option “−−” to signal the end of arguments. In
compatibility mode, it warns about but otherwise ignores undefined options. In normal operation, such
arguments are passed on to the AWK program for it to process.
The AWK book does not define the return value of srand(). The POSIX standard has it return the seed it
was using, to allow keeping track of random number sequences. Therefore srand() in gawk also
returns its current seed.
Other new features are: The use of multiple −f options (from MKS awk); the ENVIRON array; the \a,
and \v escape sequences (done originally in gawk and fed back into the Bell Laboratories version); the
tolower() and toupper() built-in functions (from the Bell Laboratories version); and the ANSI C con-
version specifications in printf (done first in the Bell Laboratories version).
HISTORICAL FEATURES
There are two features of historical AWK implementations that gawk supports. First, it is possible to
call the length() built-in function not only with no argument, but even without parentheses! Thus,
a = length # Holy Algol 60, Batman!
is the same as either of
a = length()
a = length($0)
This feature is marked as “deprecated” in the POSIX standard, and gawk issues a warning about its use
if −−lint is specified on the command line.
The other feature is the use of either the continue or the break statements outside the body of a while,
for, or do loop. Traditional AWK implementations have treated such usage as equivalent to the next
statement. Gawk supports this usage if −−traditional has been specified.
GNU EXTENSIONS
Gawk has a number of extensions to POSIX awk. They are described in this section. All the extensions
described here can be disabled by invoking gawk with the −−traditional or −−posix options.
The following features of gawk are not available in POSIX awk.
• No path search is performed for files named via the −f option. Therefore the AWKPATH environ-
ment variable is not special.
• The \x escape sequence. (Disabled with −−posix.)
• The fflush() function. (Disabled with −−posix.)
• The ability to continue lines after ? and :. (Disabled with −−posix.)
• Octal and hexadecimal constants in AWK programs.
• The ARGIND, BINMODE, ERRNO, LINT, RT and TEXTDOMAIN variables are not special.
• The IGNORECASE variable and its side-effects are not available.
• The FIELDWIDTHS variable and fixed-width field splitting.
• The PROCINFO array is not available.

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• The use of RS as a regular expression.

• The special file names available for I/O redirection are not recognized.
• The |& operator for creating co-processes.
• The ability to split out individual characters using the null string as the value of FS, and as the third
argument to split().
• The optional second argument to the close() function.
• The optional third argument to the match() function.
• The ability to use positional specifiers with printf and sprintf().
• The ability to pass an array to length().
• The use of delete array to delete the entire contents of an array.
• The use of nextfile to abandon processing of the current input file.
• The and(), asort(), asorti(), bindtextdomain(), compl(), dcgettext(), dcngettext(), gensub(),
lshift(), mktime(), or(), rshift(), strftime(), strtonum(), systime() and xor() functions.
• Localizable strings.
• Adding new built-in functions dynamically with the extension() function.
The AWK book does not define the return value of the close() function. Gawk’s close() returns the
value from fclose(3), or pclose(3), when closing an output file or pipe, respectively. It returns the
process’s exit status when closing an input pipe. The return value is −1 if the named file, pipe or co-
process was not opened with a redirection.
When gawk is invoked with the −−traditional option, if the fs argument to the −F option is “t”, then
FS is set to the tab character. Note that typing gawk −F\t . . . simply causes the shell to quote the “t,”
and does not pass “\t” to the −F option. Since this is a rather ugly special case, it is not the default
behavior. This behavior also does not occur if −−posix has been specified. To really get a tab charac-
ter as the field separator, it is best to use single quotes: gawk −F’\t’ . . ..
If gawk is configured with the −−enable−switch option to the configure command, then it accepts an
additional control-flow statement:
switch (expression) {
case value|regex : statement
...
[ default: statement ]
}
If gawk is configured with the −−disable−directories-fatal option, then it will silently skip directories
named on the command line. Otherwise, it will do so only if invoked with the −−traditional option.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The AWKPATH environment variable can be used to provide a list of directories that gawk searches
when looking for files named via the −f and −−file options.
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.
SEE ALSO
egrep(1), getpid(2), getppid(2), getpgrp(2), getuid(2), geteuid(2), getgid(2), getegid(2), getgroups(2)
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 3.0, published by the Free Software Foundation, 2001.
The current version of this document is available online at http://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/man-
ual.
BUGS
The −F option is not necessary given the command line variable assignment feature; it remains only for
backwards compatibility.

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Syntactically invalid single character programs tend to overflow the parse stack, generating a rather
unhelpful message. Such programs are surprisingly difficult to diagnose in the completely general
case, and the effort to do so really is not worth it.
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 compatible with the new
version of UNIX awk. Arnold Robbins is the current maintainer.
The initial DOS port was done by Conrad Kwok and Scott Garfinkle. Scott Deifik is the current DOS
maintainer. Pat Rankin did the port to VMS, and Michal Jaegermann did the port to the Atari ST. The
port to OS/2 was done by Kai Uwe Rommel, with contributions and help from Darrel Hankerson. Juan
M. Guerrero now maintains the OS/2 port. Fred Fish supplied support for the Amiga, and Martin
Brown provided the BeOS port. Stephen Davies provided the original Tandem port, and Matthew
Woehlke provided changes for Tandem’s POSIX-compliant systems.
VERSION INFORMATION
This man page documents gawk, version 3.1.6.
BUG REPORTS
If you find a bug in gawk, please send electronic mail to [email protected]. Please include your
operating system and its revision, the version of gawk (from gawk −−version), what C compiler you
used to compile it, and a test program and data that are as small as possible for reproducing the prob-
lem.
Before sending a bug report, please do the following things. First, verify that you have the latest ver-
sion of gawk. Many bugs (usually subtle ones) are fixed at each release, and if yours is out of date, the
problem may already have been solved. Second, please see if setting the environment variable
LC_ALL to LC_ALL=C causes things to behave as you expect. If so, it’s a locale issue, and may or
may not really be a bug. Finally, please read this man page and the reference manual carefully to be
sure that what you think is a bug really is, instead of just a quirk in the language.
Whatever you do, do NOT post a bug report in comp.lang.awk. While the gawk developers occasion-
ally read this newsgroup, posting bug reports there is an unreliable way to report bugs. Instead, please
use the electronic mail addresses given above.
If you’re using a GNU/Linux system or BSD-based system, you may wish to submit a bug report to the
vendor of your distribution. That’s fine, but please send a copy to the official email address as well,
since there’s no guarantee that the bug will be forwarded to the gawk maintainer.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Brian Kernighan of Bell Laboratories provided valuable assistance during testing and debugging. We
thank him.
COPYING PERMISSIONS
Copyright © 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004,
2005, 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual page provided the copy-
right 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 manual page into another language,
under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a
translation approved by the Foundation.

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AWK
PROLOG
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer’s Manual. The Linux implementation of this inter-
face may differ (consult the corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the
interface may not be implemented on Linux.
NAME
awk − pattern scanning and processing language
SYNOPSIS
awk [-F ERE][-v assignment] ... program [argument ...]

awk [-F ERE] -f progfile ... [-v assignment] ...[argument ...]

DESCRIPTION
The awk utility shall execute programs written in the awk programming language, which is specialized
for textual data manipulation. An awk program is a sequence of patterns and corresponding actions.
When input is read that matches a pattern, the action associated with that pattern is carried out.
Input shall be interpreted as a sequence of records. By default, a record is a line, less its terminating
<newline>, but this can be changed by using the RS built-in variable. Each record of input shall be
matched in turn against each pattern in the program. For each pattern matched, the associated action
shall be executed.
The awk utility shall interpret each input record as a sequence of fields where, by default, a field is a
string of non- <blank>s. This default white-space field delimiter can be changed by using the FS built-
in variable or -F ERE. The awk utility shall denote the first field in a record $1, the second $2, and so
on. The symbol $0 shall refer to the entire record; setting any other field causes the re-evaluation of $0.
Assigning to $0 shall reset the values of all other fields and the NF built-in variable.
OPTIONS
The awk utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 12.2,
Utility Syntax Guidelines.
The following options shall be supported:
-F ERE
Define the input field separator to be the extended regular expression ERE, before any input is
read; see Regular Expressions .
-f progfile
Specify the pathname of the file progfile containing an awk program. If multiple instances of
this option are specified, the concatenation of the files specified as progfile in the order speci-
fied shall be the awk program. The awk program can alternatively be specified in the command
line as a single argument.
-v assignment
The application shall ensure that the assignment argument is in the same form as an assign-
ment operand. The specified variable assignment shall occur prior to executing the awk pro-
gram, including the actions associated with BEGIN patterns (if any). Multiple occurrences of
this option can be specified.

OPERANDS
The following operands shall be supported:
program
If no -f option is specified, the first operand to awk shall be the text of the awk program. The
application shall supply the program operand as a single argument to awk. If the text does not
end in a <newline>, awk shall interpret the text as if it did.
argument
Either of the following two types of argument can be intermixed:
file
A pathname of a file that contains the input to be read, which is matched against the set of

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patterns in the program. If no file operands are specified, or if a file operand is ’-’, the standard
input shall be used.
assignment
An operand that begins with an underscore or alphabetic character from the portable character
set (see the table in the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 6.1, Porta-
ble Character Set), followed by a sequence of underscores, digits, and alphabetics from the
portable character set, followed by the ’=’ character, shall specify a variable assignment rather
than a pathname. The characters before the ’=’ represent the name of an awk variable; if that
name is an awk reserved word (see Grammar ) the behavior is undefined. The characters fol-
lowing the equal sign shall be interpreted as if they appeared in the awk program preceded and
followed by a double-quote ( ’ )’ character, as a STRING token (see Grammar ), except that if
the last character is an unescaped backslash, it shall be interpreted as a literal backslash rather
than as the first character of the sequence "\"" . The variable shall be assigned the value of
that STRING token and, if appropriate, shall be considered a numeric string (see Expressions
in awk ), the variable shall also be assigned its numeric value. Each such variable assignment
shall occur just prior to the processing of the following file, if any. Thus, an assignment before
the first file argument shall be executed after the BEGIN actions (if any), while an assignment
after the last file argument shall occur before the END actions (if any). If there are no file argu-
ments, assignments shall be executed before processing the standard input.

STDIN
The standard input shall be used only if no file operands are specified, or if a file operand is ’-’ ; see the
INPUT FILES section. If the awk program contains no actions and no patterns, but is otherwise a valid
awk program, standard input and any file operands shall not be read and awk shall exit with a return sta-
tus of zero.
INPUT FILES
Input files to the awk program from any of the following sources shall be text files:
* Any file operands or their equivalents, achieved by modifying the awk variables ARGV and ARGC

* Standard input in the absence of any file operands

* Arguments to the getline function

Whether the variable RS is set to a value other than a <newline> or not, for these files, implementations
shall support records terminated with the specified separator up to {LINE_MAX} bytes and may sup-
port longer records.
If -f progfile is specified, the application shall ensure that the files named by each of the progfile option-
arguments are text files and their concatenation, in the same order as they appear in the arguments, is an
awk program.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables shall affect the execution of awk:
LANG Provide a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. (See the
Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 8.2, Internationalization Variables
for the precedence of internationalization variables used to determine the values of locale cate-
gories.)
LC_ALL
If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of all the other internationalization vari-
ables.
LC_COLLATE
Determine the locale for the behavior of ranges, equivalence classes, and multi-character col-
lating elements within regular expressions and in comparisons of string values.
LC_CTYPE
Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters (for
example, single-byte as opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments and input files), the

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behavior of character classes within regular expressions, the identification of characters as let-
ters, and the mapping of uppercase and lowercase characters for the toupper and tolower
functions.
LC_MESSAGES
Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents of diagnostic mes-
sages written to standard error.
LC_NUMERIC
Determine the radix character used when interpreting numeric input, performing conversions
between numeric and string values, and formatting numeric output. Regardless of locale, the
period character (the decimal-point character of the POSIX locale) is the decimal-point char-
acter recognized in processing awk programs (including assignments in command line argu-
ments).
NLSPATH
Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing of LC_MESSAGES .
PATH Determine the search path when looking for commands executed by system(expr), or input and
output pipes; see the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Chapter 8, Environ-
ment Variables.

In addition, all environment variables shall be visible via the awk variable ENVIRON.
ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS
Default.
STDOUT
The nature of the output files depends on the awk program.
STDERR
The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.
OUTPUT FILES
The nature of the output files depends on the awk program.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
Overall Program Structure
An awk program is composed of pairs of the form:

pattern { action }
Either the pattern or the action (including the enclosing brace characters) can be omitted.
A missing pattern shall match any record of input, and a missing action shall be equivalent to:

{ print }
Execution of the awk program shall start by first executing the actions associated with all BEGIN pat-
terns in the order they occur in the program. Then each file operand (or standard input if no files were
specified) shall be processed in turn by reading data from the file until a record separator is seen (
<newline> by default). Before the first reference to a field in the record is evaluated, the record shall be
split into fields, according to the rules in Regular Expressions, using the value of FS that was current at
the time the record was read. Each pattern in the program then shall be evaluated in the order of occur-
rence, and the action associated with each pattern that matches the current record executed. The action
for a matching pattern shall be executed before evaluating subsequent patterns. Finally, the actions
associated with all END patterns shall be executed in the order they occur in the program.
Expressions in awk
Expressions describe computations used in patterns and actions. In the following table, valid expres-
sion operations are given in groups from highest precedence first to lowest precedence last, with equal-
precedence operators grouped between horizontal lines. In expression evaluation, where the grammar is
formally ambiguous, higher precedence operators shall be evaluated before lower precedence operators.
In this table expr, expr1, expr2, and expr3 represent any expression, while lvalue represents any entity

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that can be assigned to (that is, on the left side of an assignment operator). The precise syntax of
expressions is given in Grammar .

Table: Expressions in Decreasing Precedence in awk

Syntax Name Type of Result Associativity
( expr ) Grouping Type of expr N/A
$expr Field reference String N/A
++ lvalue Pre-increment Numeric N/A
-- lvalue Pre-decrement Numeric N/A
lvalue ++ Post-increment Numeric N/A
lvalue -- Post-decrement Numeric N/A
expr ˆ expr Exponentiation Numeric Right
! expr Logical not Numeric N/A
+ expr Unary plus Numeric N/A
- expr Unary minus Numeric N/A
expr * expr Multiplication Numeric Left
expr / expr Division Numeric Left
expr % expr Modulus Numeric Left
expr + expr Addition Numeric Left
expr - expr Subtraction Numeric Left
expr expr String concatenation String Left
expr < expr Less than Numeric None
expr <= expr Less than or equal to Numeric None
expr != expr Not equal to Numeric None
expr == expr Equal to Numeric None
expr > expr Greater than Numeric None
expr >= expr Greater than or equal to Numeric None
expr ˜ expr ERE match Numeric None
expr !˜ expr ERE non-match Numeric None
expr in array Array membership Numeric Left
( index ) in array Multi-dimension array Numeric Left
membership
expr && expr Logical AND Numeric Left
expr || expr Logical OR Numeric Left
expr1 ? expr2 : expr3 Conditional expression Type of selected Right
expr2 or expr3
lvalue ˆ= expr Exponentiation assignment Numeric Right
lvalue %= expr Modulus assignment Numeric Right
lvalue *= expr Multiplication assignment Numeric Right
lvalue /= expr Division assignment Numeric Right
lvalue += expr Addition assignment Numeric Right
lvalue -= expr Subtraction assignment Numeric Right
lvalue = expr Assignment Type of expr Right
Each expression shall have either a string value, a numeric value, or both. Except as stated for specific
contexts, the value of an expression shall be implicitly converted to the type needed for the context in
which it is used. A string value shall be converted to a numeric value by the equivalent of the following
calls to functions defined by the ISO C standard:

setlocale(LC_NUMERIC, "");
numeric_value = atof(string_value);
A numeric value that is exactly equal to the value of an integer (see Concepts Derived from the ISO C
Standard ) shall be converted to a string by the equivalent of a call to the sprintf function (see String
Functions ) with the string "%d" as the fmt argument and the numeric value being converted as the
first and only expr argument. Any other numeric value shall be converted to a string by the equivalent
of a call to the sprintf function with the value of the variable CONVFMT as the fmt argument and the
numeric value being converted as the first and only expr argument. The result of the conversion is
unspecified if the value of CONVFMT is not a floating-point format specification. This volume of

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IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 specifies no explicit conversions between numbers and strings. An application
can force an expression to be treated as a number by adding zero to it, or can force it to be treated as a
string by concatenating the null string ( "" ) to it.
A string value shall be considered a numeric string if it comes from one of the following:
1. Field variables

2. Input from the getline() function

3. FILENAME

4. ARGV array elements

5. ENVIRON array elements

6. Array elements created by the split() function

7. A command line variable assignment

8. Variable assignment from another numeric string variable

and after all the following conversions have been applied, the resulting string would lexically be recog-
nized as a NUMBER token as described by the lexical conventions in Grammar :
* All leading and trailing <blank>s are discarded.

* If the first non- <blank> is ’+’ or ’-’, it is discarded.

* Changing each occurrence of the decimal point character from the current locale to a period.

If a ’-’ character is ignored in the preceding description, the numeric value of the numeric string shall
be the negation of the numeric value of the recognized NUMBER token. Otherwise, the numeric value
of the numeric string shall be the numeric value of the recognized NUMBER token. Whether or not a
string is a numeric string shall be relevant only in contexts where that term is used in this section.
When an expression is used in a Boolean context, if it has a numeric value, a value of zero shall be
treated as false and any other value shall be treated as true. Otherwise, a string value of the null string
shall be treated as false and any other value shall be treated as true. A Boolean context shall be one of
the following:
* The first subexpression of a conditional expression

* An expression operated on by logical NOT, logical AND, or logical OR

* The second expression of a for statement

* The expression of an if statement

* The expression of the while clause in either a while or do... while statement

* An expression used as a pattern (as in Overall Program Structure)

All arithmetic shall follow the semantics of floating-point arithmetic as specified by the ISO C standard
(see Concepts Derived from the ISO C Standard ).
The value of the expression:

expr1 ˆ expr2
shall be equivalent to the value returned by the ISO C standard function call:

pow(expr1, expr2)
The expression:

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AWK(1P) POSIX Programmer’s Manual AWK(1P)

lvalue ˆ= expr
shall be equivalent to the ISO C standard expression:

lvalue = pow(lvalue, expr)

except that lvalue shall be evaluated only once. The value of the expression:

expr1 % expr2
shall be equivalent to the value returned by the ISO C standard function call:

fmod(expr1, expr2)
The expression:

lvalue %= expr
shall be equivalent to the ISO C standard expression:

lvalue = fmod(lvalue, expr)

except that lvalue shall be evaluated only once.
Variables and fields shall be set by the assignment statement:

lvalue = expression
and the type of expression shall determine the resulting variable type. The assignment includes the
arithmetic assignments ( "+=", "-=", "*=", "/=", "%=", "ˆ=", "++", "--" ) all of which shall pro-
duce a numeric result. The left-hand side of an assignment and the target of increment and decrement
operators can be one of a variable, an array with index, or a field selector.
The awk language supplies arrays that are used for storing numbers or strings. Arrays need not be
declared. They shall initially be empty, and their sizes shall change dynamically. The subscripts, or ele-
ment identifiers, are strings, providing a type of associative array capability. An array name followed by
a subscript within square brackets can be used as an lvalue and thus as an expression, as described in
the grammar; see Grammar . Unsubscripted array names can be used in only the following contexts:
* A parameter in a function definition or function call

* The NAME token following any use of the keyword in as specified in the grammar (see Grammar
); if the name used in this context is not an array name, the behavior is undefined

A valid array index shall consist of one or more comma-separated expressions, similar to the way in
which multi-dimensional arrays are indexed in some programming languages. Because awk arrays are
really one-dimensional, such a comma-separated list shall be converted to a single string by concatenat-
ing the string values of the separate expressions, each separated from the other by the value of the
SUBSEP variable. Thus, the following two index operations shall be equivalent:

var[expr1, expr2, ... exprn]

var[expr1 SUBSEP expr2 SUBSEP ... SUBSEP exprn]

The application shall ensure that a multi-dimensioned index used with the in operator is parenthesized.
The in operator, which tests for the existence of a particular array element, shall not cause that element
to exist. Any other reference to a nonexistent array element shall automatically create it.

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Comparisons (with the ’<’, "<=", "!=", "==", ’>’, and ">=" operators) shall be made numerically if
both operands are numeric, if one is numeric and the other has a string value that is a numeric string, or
if one is numeric and the other has the uninitialized value. Otherwise, operands shall be converted to
strings as required and a string comparison shall be made using the locale-specific collation sequence.
The value of the comparison expression shall be 1 if the relation is true, or 0 if the relation is false.
Variables and Special Variables
Variables can be used in an awk program by referencing them. With the exception of function parame-
ters (see User-Defined Functions ), they are not explicitly declared. Function parameter names shall be
local to the function; all other variable names shall be global. The same name shall not be used as both
a function parameter name and as the name of a function or a special awk variable. The same name
shall not be used both as a variable name with global scope and as the name of a function. The same
name shall not be used within the same scope both as a scalar variable and as an array. Uninitialized
variables, including scalar variables, array elements, and field variables, shall have an uninitialized
value. An uninitialized value shall have both a numeric value of zero and a string value of the empty
string. Evaluation of variables with an uninitialized value, to either string or numeric, shall be deter-
mined by the context in which they are used.
Field variables shall be designated by a ’$’ followed by a number or numerical expression. The effect
of the field number expression evaluating to anything other than a non-negative integer is unspecified;
uninitialized variables or string values need not be converted to numeric values in this context. New
field variables can be created by assigning a value to them. References to nonexistent fields (that is,
fields after $NF), shall evaluate to the uninitialized value. Such references shall not create new fields.
However, assigning to a nonexistent field (for example, $(NF+2)=5) shall increase the value of NF;
create any intervening fields with the uninitialized value; and cause the value of $0 to be recomputed,
with the fields being separated by the value of OFS. Each field variable shall have a string value or an
uninitialized value when created. Field variables shall have the uninitialized value when created from
$0 using FS and the variable does not contain any characters. If appropriate, the field variable shall be
considered a numeric string (see Expressions in awk ).
Implementations shall support the following other special variables that are set by awk:
ARGC The number of elements in the ARGV array.
ARGV An array of command line arguments, excluding options and the program argument, numbered
from zero to ARGC-1.
The arguments in ARGV can be modified or added to; ARGC can be altered. As each input file ends,
awk shall treat the next non-null element of ARGV, up to the current value of ARGC-1, inclusive, as
the name of the next input file. Thus, setting an element of ARGV to null means that it shall not be
treated as an input file. The name ’-’ indicates the standard input. If an argument matches the format of
an assignment operand, this argument shall be treated as an assignment rather than a file argument.
CONVFMT
The printf format for converting numbers to strings (except for output statements, where
OFMT is used); "%.6g" by default.
ENVIRON
An array representing the value of the environment, as described in the exec functions defined
in the System Interfaces volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001. The indices of the array shall be
strings consisting of the names of the environment variables, and the value of each array ele-
ment shall be a string consisting of the value of that variable. If appropriate, the environment
variable shall be considered a numeric string (see Expressions in awk ); the array element shall
also have its numeric value.
In all cases where the behavior of awk is affected by environment variables (including the environment
of any commands that awk executes via the system function or via pipeline redirections with the print
statement, the printf statement, or the getline function), the environment used shall be the environment
at the time awk began executing; it is implementation-defined whether any modification of ENVIRON
affects this environment.
FILENAME
A pathname of the current input file. Inside a BEGIN action the value is undefined. Inside an
END action the value shall be the name of the last input file processed.

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FNR The ordinal number of the current record in the current file. Inside a BEGIN action the value
shall be zero. Inside an END action the value shall be the number of the last record processed
in the last file processed.
FS Input field separator regular expression; a <space> by default.
NF The number of fields in the current record. Inside a BEGIN action, the use of NF is undefined
unless a getline function without a var argument is executed previously. Inside an END
action, NF shall retain the value it had for the last record read, unless a subsequent, redirected,
getline function without a var argument is performed prior to entering the END action.
NR The ordinal number of the current record from the start of input. Inside a BEGIN action the
value shall be zero. Inside an END action the value shall be the number of the last record pro-
cessed.
OFMT The printf format for converting numbers to strings in output statements (see Output State-
ments ); "%.6g" by default. The result of the conversion is unspecified if the value of OFMT
is not a floating-point format specification.
OFS The print statement output field separation; <space> by default.
ORS The print statement output record separator; a <newline> by default.
RLENGTH
The length of the string matched by the match function.
RS The first character of the string value of RS shall be the input record separator; a <newline> by
default. If RS contains more than one character, the results are unspecified. If RS is null, then
records are separated by sequences consisting of a <newline> plus one or more blank lines,
leading or trailing blank lines shall not result in empty records at the beginning or end of the
input, and a <newline> shall always be a field separator, no matter what the value of FS is.
RSTART
The starting position of the string matched by the match function, numbering from 1. This
shall always be equivalent to the return value of the match function.
SUBSEP
The subscript separator string for multi-dimensional arrays; the default value is implementa-
tion-defined.

Regular Expressions
The awk utility shall make use of the extended regular expression notation (see the Base Definitions
volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 9.4, Extended Regular Expressions) except that it shall allow
the use of C-language conventions for escaping special characters within the EREs, as specified in the
table in the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Chapter 5, File Format Notation ( ’\\’,
’\a’, ’\b’, ’\f ’, ’\n’, ’\r’, ’\t’, ’\v’ ) and the following table; these escape sequences shall be recognized
both inside and outside bracket expressions. Note that records need not be separated by <newline>s
and string constants can contain <newline>s, so even the "\n" sequence is valid in awk EREs. Using a
slash character within an ERE requires the escaping shown in the following table.

Table: Escape Sequences in awk

Escape
Sequence Description Meaning
\" Backslash quotation-mark Quotation-mark character
\/ Backslash slash Slash character
\ddd A backslash character followed by The character whose encoding is
the longest sequence of one, two, or represented by the one, two, or three-
three octal-digit characters digit octal integer. Multi-byte char-
(01234567). If all of the digits are 0 acters require multiple, concatenated
(that is, representation of the NUL escape sequences of this type, includ-
character), the behavior is unde- ing the leading ’\’ for each byte.
fined.

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\c A backslash character followed by Undefined

any character not described in this
table or in the table in the Base Defi-
nitions volume of
IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Chapter 5,
File Format Notation ( ’\\’, ’\a’, ’\b’,
’\f ’, ’\n’, ’\r’, ’\t’, ’\v’ ).
A regular expression can be matched against a specific field or string by using one of the two regular
expression matching operators, ’˜’ and "!˜" . These operators shall interpret their right-hand operand as
a regular expression and their left-hand operand as a string. If the regular expression matches the string,
the ’˜’ expression shall evaluate to a value of 1, and the "!˜" expression shall evaluate to a value of 0.
(The regular expression matching operation is as defined by the term matched in the Base Definitions
volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 9.1, Regular Expression Definitions, where a match occurs
on any part of the string unless the regular expression is limited with the circumflex or dollar sign spe-
cial characters.) If the regular expression does not match the string, the ’˜’ expression shall evaluate to a
value of 0, and the "!˜" expression shall evaluate to a value of 1. If the right-hand operand is any
expression other than the lexical token ERE, the string value of the expression shall be interpreted as
an extended regular expression, including the escape conventions described above. Note that these
same escape conventions shall also be applied in determining the value of a string literal (the lexical
token STRING), and thus shall be applied a second time when a string literal is used in this context.
When an ERE token appears as an expression in any context other than as the right-hand of the ’˜’ or
"!˜" operator or as one of the built-in function arguments described below, the value of the resulting
expression shall be the equivalent of:

$0 ˜ /ere/
The ere argument to the gsub, match, sub functions, and the fs argument to the split function (see
String Functions ) shall be interpreted as extended regular expressions. These can be either ERE tokens
or arbitrary expressions, and shall be interpreted in the same manner as the right-hand side of the ’˜’ or
"!˜" operator.
An extended regular expression can be used to separate fields by using the -F ERE option or by assign-
ing a string containing the expression to the built-in variable FS. The default value of the FS variable
shall be a single <space>. The following describes FS behavior:
1. If FS is a null string, the behavior is unspecified.

2. If FS is a single character:
a. If FS is <space>, skip leading and trailing <blank>s; fields shall be delimited by sets of one
or more <blank>s.

b. Otherwise, if FS is any other character c, fields shall be delimited by each single occurrence
of c.

3. Otherwise, the string value of FS shall be considered to be an extended regular expression. Each
occurrence of a sequence matching the extended regular expression shall delimit fields.

Except for the ’˜’ and "!˜" operators, and in the gsub, match, split, and sub built-in functions, ERE
matching shall be based on input records; that is, record separator characters (the first character of the
value of the variable RS, <newline> by default) cannot be embedded in the expression, and no expres-
sion shall match the record separator character. If the record separator is not <newline>, <newline>s
embedded in the expression can be matched. For the ’˜’ and "!˜" operators, and in those four built-in
functions, ERE matching shall be based on text strings; that is, any character (including <newline> and
the record separator) can be embedded in the pattern, and an appropriate pattern shall match any char-
acter. However, in all awk ERE matching, the use of one or more NUL characters in the pattern, input
record, or text string produces undefined results.

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Patterns
A pattern is any valid expression, a range specified by two expressions separated by a comma, or one
of the two special patterns BEGIN or END.
Special Patterns
The awk utility shall recognize two special patterns, BEGIN and END. Each BEGIN pattern shall be
matched once and its associated action executed before the first record of input is read (except possibly
by use of the getline function-see Input/Output and General Functions - in a prior BEGIN action) and
before command line assignment is done. Each END pattern shall be matched once and its associated
action executed after the last record of input has been read. These two patterns shall have associated
actions.
BEGIN and END shall not combine with other patterns. Multiple BEGIN and END patterns shall be
allowed. The actions associated with the BEGIN patterns shall be executed in the order specified in the
program, as are the END actions. An END pattern can precede a BEGIN pattern in a program.
If an awk program consists of only actions with the pattern BEGIN, and the BEGIN action contains no
getline function, awk shall exit without reading its input when the last statement in the last BEGIN
action is executed. If an awk program consists of only actions with the pattern END or only actions
with the patterns BEGIN and END, the input shall be read before the statements in the END actions
are executed.
Expression Patterns
An expression pattern shall be evaluated as if it were an expression in a Boolean context. If the result is
true, the pattern shall be considered to match, and the associated action (if any) shall be executed. If the
result is false, the action shall not be executed.
Pattern Ranges
A pattern range consists of two expressions separated by a comma; in this case, the action shall be per-
formed for all records between a match of the first expression and the following match of the second
expression, inclusive. At this point, the pattern range can be repeated starting at input records subse-
quent to the end of the matched range.
Actions
An action is a sequence of statements as shown in the grammar in Grammar . Any single statement can
be replaced by a statement list enclosed in braces. The application shall ensure that statements in a
statement list are separated by <newline>s or semicolons. Statements in a statement list shall be
executed sequentially in the order that they appear.
The expression acting as the conditional in an if statement shall be evaluated and if it is non-zero or
non-null, the following statement shall be executed; otherwise, if else is present, the statement follow-
ing the else shall be executed.
The if, while, do... while, for, break, and continue statements are based on the ISO C standard (see
Concepts Derived from the ISO C Standard ), except that the Boolean expressions shall be treated as
described in Expressions in awk , and except in the case of:

for (variable in array)

which shall iterate, assigning each index of array to variable in an unspecified order. The results of
adding new elements to array within such a for loop are undefined. If a break or continue statement
occurs outside of a loop, the behavior is undefined.
The delete statement shall remove an individual array element. Thus, the following code deletes an
entire array:

for (index in array)

delete array[index]
The next statement shall cause all further processing of the current input record to be abandoned. The
behavior is undefined if a next statement appears or is invoked in a BEGIN or END action.
The exit statement shall invoke all END actions in the order in which they occur in the program source
and then terminate the program without reading further input. An exit statement inside an END action

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shall terminate the program without further execution of END actions. If an expression is specified in
an exit statement, its numeric value shall be the exit status of awk, unless subsequent errors are encoun-
tered or a subsequent exit statement with an expression is executed.
Output Statements
Both print and printf statements shall write to standard output by default. The output shall be written
to the location specified by output_redirection if one is supplied, as follows:

> expression>> expression| expression

In all cases, the expression shall be evaluated to produce a string that is used as a pathname into which
to write (for ’>’ or ">>" ) or as a command to be executed (for ’|’ ). Using the first two forms, if the
file of that name is not currently open, it shall be opened, creating it if necessary and using the first
form, truncating the file. The output then shall be appended to the file. As long as the file remains open,
subsequent calls in which expression evaluates to the same string value shall simply append output to
the file. The file remains open until the close function (see Input/Output and General Functions ) is
called with an expression that evaluates to the same string value.
The third form shall write output onto a stream piped to the input of a command. The stream shall be
created if no stream is currently open with the value of expression as its command name. The stream
created shall be equivalent to one created by a call to the popen() function defined in the System Inter-
faces volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 with the value of expression as the command argument and a
value of w as the mode argument. As long as the stream remains open, subsequent calls in which
expression evaluates to the same string value shall write output to the existing stream. The stream shall
remain open until the close function (see Input/Output and General Functions ) is called with an
expression that evaluates to the same string value. At that time, the stream shall be closed as if by a
call to the pclose() function defined in the System Interfaces volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001.
As described in detail by the grammar in Grammar , these output statements shall take a comma-sepa-
rated list of expressions referred to in the grammar by the non-terminal symbols expr_list,
print_expr_list, or print_expr_list_opt. This list is referred to here as the expression list, and each
member is referred to as an expression argument.
The print statement shall write the value of each expression argument onto the indicated output stream
separated by the current output field separator (see variable OFS above), and terminated by the output
record separator (see variable ORS above). All expression arguments shall be taken as strings, being
converted if necessary; this conversion shall be as described in Expressions in awk , with the exception
that the printf format in OFMT shall be used instead of the value in CONVFMT. An empty expres-
sion list shall stand for the whole input record ($0).
The printf statement shall produce output based on a notation similar to the File Format Notation used
to describe file formats in this volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (see the Base Definitions volume of
IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Chapter 5, File Format Notation). Output shall be produced as specified with
the first expression argument as the string format and subsequent expression arguments as the strings
arg1 to argn, inclusive, with the following exceptions:
1. The format shall be an actual character string rather than a graphical representation. Therefore, it
cannot contain empty character positions. The <space> in the format string, in any context other
than a flag of a conversion specification, shall be treated as an ordinary character that is copied to
the output.

2. If the character set contains a ’ ’ character and that character appears in the format string, it shall
be treated as an ordinary character that is copied to the output.

3. The escape sequences beginning with a backslash character shall be treated as sequences of ordi-
nary characters that are copied to the output. Note that these same sequences shall be interpreted
lexically by awk when they appear in literal strings, but they shall not be treated specially by the
printf statement.

4. A field width or precision can be specified as the ’*’ character instead of a digit string. In this case
the next argument from the expression list shall be fetched and its numeric value taken as the field
width or precision.

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5. The implementation shall not precede or follow output from the d or u conversion specifier char-
acters with <blank>s not specified by the format string.

6. The implementation shall not precede output from the o conversion specifier character with lead-
ing zeros not specified by the format string.

7. For the c conversion specifier character: if the argument has a numeric value, the character whose
encoding is that value shall be output. If the value is zero or is not the encoding of any character in
the character set, the behavior is undefined. If the argument does not have a numeric value, the
first character of the string value shall be output; if the string does not contain any characters, the
behavior is undefined.

8. For each conversion specification that consumes an argument, the next expression argument shall
be evaluated. With the exception of the c conversion specifier character, the value shall be con-
verted (according to the rules specified in Expressions in awk ) to the appropriate type for the con-
version specification.

9. If there are insufficient expression arguments to satisfy all the conversion specifications in the for-
mat string, the behavior is undefined.

10. If any character sequence in the format string begins with a ’%’ character, but does not form a
valid conversion specification, the behavior is unspecified.

Both print and printf can output at least {LINE_MAX} bytes.

Functions
The awk language has a variety of built-in functions: arithmetic, string, input/output, and general.
Arithmetic Functions
The arithmetic functions, except for int, shall be based on the ISO C standard (see Concepts Derived
from the ISO C Standard ). The behavior is undefined in cases where the ISO C standard specifies that
an error be returned or that the behavior is undefined. Although the grammar (see Grammar ) permits
built-in functions to appear with no arguments or parentheses, unless the argument or parentheses are
indicated as optional in the following list (by displaying them within the "[]" brackets), such use is
undefined.
atan2(y,x)
Return arctangent of y/x in radians in the range [-pi,pi].
cos(x) Return cosine of x, where x is in radians.
sin(x) Return sine of x, where x is in radians.
exp(x) Return the exponential function of x.
log(x) Return the natural logarithm of x.
sqrt(x) Return the square root of x.
int(x) Return the argument truncated to an integer. Truncation shall be toward 0 when x>0.
rand() Return a random number n, such that 0<=n<1.
srand([expr])
Set the seed value for rand to expr or use the time of day if expr is omitted. The previous seed
value shall be returned.

String Functions
The string functions in the following list shall be supported. Although the grammar (see Grammar )
permits built-in functions to appear with no arguments or parentheses, unless the argument or parenthe-
ses are indicated as optional in the following list (by displaying them within the "[]" brackets), such
use is undefined.
gsub(ere, repl[, in])
Behave like sub (see below), except that it shall replace all occurrences of the regular expres-
sion (like the ed utility global substitute) in $0 or in the in argument, when specified.

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index(s, t)
Return the position, in characters, numbering from 1, in string s where string t first occurs, or
zero if it does not occur at all.
length[([s])]
Return the length, in characters, of its argument taken as a string, or of the whole record, $0, if
there is no argument.
match(s, ere)
Return the position, in characters, numbering from 1, in string s where the extended regular
expression ere occurs, or zero if it does not occur at all. RSTART shall be set to the starting
position (which is the same as the returned value), zero if no match is found; RLENGTH shall
be set to the length of the matched string, -1 if no match is found.
split(s, a[, fs ])
Split the string s into array elements a[1], a[2], ..., a[n], and return n. All elements of the array
shall be deleted before the split is performed. The separation shall be done with the ERE fs or
with the field separator FS if fs is not given. Each array element shall have a string value when
created and, if appropriate, the array element shall be considered a numeric string (see Expres-
sions in awk ). The effect of a null string as the value of fs is unspecified.
sprintf(fmt, expr, expr, ...)
Format the expressions according to the printf format given by fmt and return the resulting
string.
sub(ere, repl[, in ])
Substitute the string repl in place of the first instance of the extended regular expression ERE
in string in and return the number of substitutions. An ampersand ( ’&’ ) appearing in the
string repl shall be replaced by the string from in that matches the ERE. An ampersand pre-
ceded with a backslash ( ’\’ ) shall be interpreted as the literal ampersand character. An occur-
rence of two consecutive backslashes shall be interpreted as just a single literal backslash char-
acter. Any other occurrence of a backslash (for example, preceding any other character) shall
be treated as a literal backslash character. Note that if repl is a string literal (the lexical token
STRING; see Grammar ), the handling of the ampersand character occurs after any lexical
processing, including any lexical backslash escape sequence processing. If in is specified and
it is not an lvalue (see Expressions in awk ), the behavior is undefined. If in is omitted, awk
shall use the current record ($0) in its place.
substr(s, m[, n ])
Return the at most n-character substring of s that begins at position m, numbering from 1. If n
is omitted, or if n specifies more characters than are left in the string, the length of the sub-
string shall be limited by the length of the string s.
tolower(s)
Return a string based on the string s. Each character in s that is an uppercase letter specified to
have a tolower mapping by the LC_CTYPE category of the current locale shall be replaced in
the returned string by the lowercase letter specified by the mapping. Other characters in s shall
be unchanged in the returned string.
toupper(s)
Return a string based on the string s. Each character in s that is a lowercase letter specified to
have a toupper mapping by the LC_CTYPE category of the current locale is replaced in the
returned string by the uppercase letter specified by the mapping. Other characters in s are
unchanged in the returned string.

All of the preceding functions that take ERE as a parameter expect a pattern or a string valued expres-
sion that is a regular expression as defined in Regular Expressions .
Input/Output and General Functions
The input/output and general functions are:
close(expression)
Close the file or pipe opened by a print or printf statement or a call to getline with the same
string-valued expression. The limit on the number of open expression arguments is

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implementation-defined. If the close was successful, the function shall return zero; otherwise,
it shall return non-zero.
expression | getline [var]
Read a record of input from a stream piped from the output of a command. The stream shall
be created if no stream is currently open with the value of expression as its command name.
The stream created shall be equivalent to one created by a call to the popen() function with the
value of expression as the command argument and a value of r as the mode argument. As long
as the stream remains open, subsequent calls in which expression evaluates to the same string
value shall read subsequent records from the stream. The stream shall remain open until the
close function is called with an expression that evaluates to the same string value. At that time,
the stream shall be closed as if by a call to the pclose() function. If var is omitted, $0 and NF
shall be set; otherwise, var shall be set and, if appropriate, it shall be considered a numeric
string (see Expressions in awk ).
The getline operator can form ambiguous constructs when there are unparenthesized operators (includ-
ing concatenate) to the left of the ’|’ (to the beginning of the expression containing getline). In the con-
text of the ’$’ operator, ’|’ shall behave as if it had a lower precedence than ’$’ . The result of evaluat-
ing other operators is unspecified, and conforming applications shall parenthesize properly all such
usages.
getline Set $0 to the next input record from the current input file. This form of getline shall set the
NF, NR, and FNR variables.
getline var
Set variable var to the next input record from the current input file and, if appropriate, var
shall be considered a numeric string (see Expressions in awk ). This form of getline shall set
the FNR and NR variables.
getline [var] < expression
Read the next record of input from a named file. The expression shall be evaluated to produce
a string that is used as a pathname. If the file of that name is not currently open, it shall be
opened. As long as the stream remains open, subsequent calls in which expression evaluates to
the same string value shall read subsequent records from the file. The file shall remain open
until the close function is called with an expression that evaluates to the same string value. If
var is omitted, $0 and NF shall be set; otherwise, var shall be set and, if appropriate, it shall be
considered a numeric string (see Expressions in awk ).
The getline operator can form ambiguous constructs when there are unparenthesized binary operators
(including concatenate) to the right of the ’<’ (up to the end of the expression containing the getline).
The result of evaluating such a construct is unspecified, and conforming applications shall parenthesize
properly all such usages.
system(expression)
Execute the command given by expression in a manner equivalent to the system() function
defined in the System Interfaces volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 and return the exit status of
the command.

All forms of getline shall return 1 for successful input, zero for end-of-file, and -1 for an error.
Where strings are used as the name of a file or pipeline, the application shall ensure that the strings are
textually identical. The terminology "same string value" implies that "equivalent strings", even those
that differ only by <space>s, represent different files.
User-Defined Functions
The awk language also provides user-defined functions. Such functions can be defined as:

function name([parameter, ...]) { statements }

A function can be referred to anywhere in an awk program; in particular, its use can precede its defini-
tion. The scope of a function is global.
Function parameters, if present, can be either scalars or arrays; the behavior is undefined if an array
name is passed as a parameter that the function uses as a scalar, or if a scalar expression is passed as a

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parameter that the function uses as an array. Function parameters shall be passed by value if scalar and
by reference if array name.
The number of parameters in the function definition need not match the number of parameters in the
function call. Excess formal parameters can be used as local variables. If fewer arguments are supplied
in a function call than are in the function definition, the extra parameters that are used in the function
body as scalars shall evaluate to the uninitialized value until they are otherwise initialized, and the extra
parameters that are used in the function body as arrays shall be treated as uninitialized arrays where
each element evaluates to the uninitialized value until otherwise initialized.
When invoking a function, no white space can be placed between the function name and the opening
parenthesis. Function calls can be nested and recursive calls can be made upon functions. Upon return
from any nested or recursive function call, the values of all of the calling function’s parameters shall be
unchanged, except for array parameters passed by reference. The return statement can be used to
return a value. If a return statement appears outside of a function definition, the behavior is undefined.
In the function definition, <newline>s shall be optional before the opening brace and after the closing
brace. Function definitions can appear anywhere in the program where a pattern-action pair is allowed.
Grammar
The grammar in this section and the lexical conventions in the following section shall together describe
the syntax for awk programs. The general conventions for this style of grammar are described in Gram-
mar Conventions . A valid program can be represented as the non-terminal symbol program in the
grammar. This formal syntax shall take precedence over the preceding text syntax description.

%token NAME NUMBER STRING ERE

%token FUNC_NAME /* Name followed by ’(’ without white space. */

/* Keywords */
%token Begin End
/* ’BEGIN’ ’END’ */

%token Break Continue Delete Do Else

/* ’break’ ’continue’ ’delete’ ’do’ ’else’ */

%token Exit For Function If In

/* ’exit’ ’for’ ’function’ ’if’ ’in’ */

%token Next Print Printf Return While

/* ’next’ ’print’ ’printf’ ’return’ ’while’ */

/* Reserved function names */

%token BUILTIN_FUNC_NAME
/* One token for the following:
* atan2 cos sin exp log sqrt int rand srand
* gsub index length match split sprintf sub
* substr tolower toupper close system
*/
%token GETLINE
/* Syntactically different from other built-ins. */

/* Two-character tokens. */
%token ADD_ASSIGN SUB_ASSIGN MUL_ASSIGN DIV_ASSIGN MOD_ASSIGN POW_ASSIGN
/* ’+=’ ’-=’ ’*=’ ’/=’ ’%=’ ’ˆ=’ */

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%token OR AND NO_MATCH EQ LE GE NE INCR DECR APPEND

/* ’||’ ’&&’ ’!˜’ ’==’ ’<=’ ’>=’ ’!=’ ’++’ ’--’ ’>>’ */

/* One-character tokens. */
%token ’{’ ’}’ ’(’ ’)’ ’[’ ’]’ ’,’ ’;’ NEWLINE
%token ’+’ ’-’ ’*’ ’%’ ’ˆ’ ’!’ ’>’ ’<’ ’|’ ’?’ ’:’ ’˜’ ’$’ ’=’

%start program
%%

program : item_list
| actionless_item_list
;

item_list : newline_opt
| actionless_item_list item terminator
| item_list item terminator
| item_list action terminator
;

actionless_item_list : item_list pattern terminator

| actionless_item_list pattern terminator
;

item : pattern action

| Function NAME ’(’ param_list_opt ’)’
newline_opt action
| Function FUNC_NAME ’(’ param_list_opt ’)’
newline_opt action
;

param_list_opt : /* empty */
| param_list
;

param_list : NAME
| param_list ’,’ NAME
;

pattern : Begin
| End
| expr
| expr ’,’ newline_opt expr
;

action : ’{’ newline_opt ’}’

| ’{’ newline_opt terminated_statement_list ’}’
| ’{’ newline_opt unterminated_statement_list ’}’
;

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terminator : terminator ’;’

| terminator NEWLINE
| ’;’
| NEWLINE
;

terminated_statement_list : terminated_statement
| terminated_statement_list terminated_statement
;

unterminated_statement_list : unterminated_statement
| terminated_statement_list unterminated_statement
;

terminated_statement : action newline_opt

| If ’(’ expr ’)’ newline_opt terminated_statement
| If ’(’ expr ’)’ newline_opt terminated_statement
Else newline_opt terminated_statement
| While ’(’ expr ’)’ newline_opt terminated_statement
| For ’(’ simple_statement_opt ’;’
expr_opt ’;’ simple_statement_opt ’)’ newline_opt
terminated_statement
| For ’(’ NAME In NAME ’)’ newline_opt
terminated_statement
| ’;’ newline_opt
| terminatable_statement NEWLINE newline_opt
| terminatable_statement ’;’ newline_opt
;

unterminated_statement : terminatable_statement
| If ’(’ expr ’)’ newline_opt unterminated_statement
| If ’(’ expr ’)’ newline_opt terminated_statement
Else newline_opt unterminated_statement
| While ’(’ expr ’)’ newline_opt unterminated_statement
| For ’(’ simple_statement_opt ’;’
expr_opt ’;’ simple_statement_opt ’)’ newline_opt
unterminated_statement
| For ’(’ NAME In NAME ’)’ newline_opt
unterminated_statement
;

terminatable_statement : simple_statement
| Break
| Continue
| Next
| Exit expr_opt
| Return expr_opt
| Do newline_opt terminated_statement While ’(’ expr ’)’
;

simple_statement_opt : /* empty */
| simple_statement
;

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simple_statement : Delete NAME ’[’ expr_list ’]’

| expr
| print_statement
;

print_statement : simple_print_statement
| simple_print_statement output_redirection
;

simple_print_statement : Print print_expr_list_opt

| Print ’(’ multiple_expr_list ’)’
| Printf print_expr_list
| Printf ’(’ multiple_expr_list ’)’
;

output_redirection : ’>’ expr

| APPEND expr
| ’|’ expr
;

expr_list_opt : /* empty */
| expr_list
;

expr_list : expr
| multiple_expr_list
;

multiple_expr_list : expr ’,’ newline_opt expr

| multiple_expr_list ’,’ newline_opt expr
;

expr_opt : /* empty */
| expr
;

expr : unary_expr
| non_unary_expr
;

unary_expr : ’+’ expr

| ’-’ expr
| unary_expr ’ˆ’ expr
| unary_expr ’*’ expr
| unary_expr ’/’ expr
| unary_expr ’%’ expr
| unary_expr ’+’ expr
| unary_expr ’-’ expr
| unary_expr non_unary_expr
| unary_expr ’<’ expr

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| unary_expr LE expr
| unary_expr NE expr
| unary_expr EQ expr
| unary_expr ’>’ expr
| unary_expr GE expr
| unary_expr ’˜’ expr
| unary_expr NO_MATCH expr
| unary_expr In NAME
| unary_expr AND newline_opt expr
| unary_expr OR newline_opt expr
| unary_expr ’?’ expr ’:’ expr
| unary_input_function
;

non_unary_expr : ’(’ expr ’)’

| ’!’ expr
| non_unary_expr ’ˆ’ expr
| non_unary_expr ’*’ expr
| non_unary_expr ’/’ expr
| non_unary_expr ’%’ expr
| non_unary_expr ’+’ expr
| non_unary_expr ’-’ expr
| non_unary_expr non_unary_expr
| non_unary_expr ’<’ expr
| non_unary_expr LE expr
| non_unary_expr NE expr
| non_unary_expr EQ expr
| non_unary_expr ’>’ expr
| non_unary_expr GE expr
| non_unary_expr ’˜’ expr
| non_unary_expr NO_MATCH expr
| non_unary_expr In NAME
| ’(’ multiple_expr_list ’)’ In NAME
| non_unary_expr AND newline_opt expr
| non_unary_expr OR newline_opt expr
| non_unary_expr ’?’ expr ’:’ expr
| NUMBER
| STRING
| lvalue
| ERE
| lvalue INCR
| lvalue DECR
| INCR lvalue
| DECR lvalue
| lvalue POW_ASSIGN expr
| lvalue MOD_ASSIGN expr
| lvalue MUL_ASSIGN expr
| lvalue DIV_ASSIGN expr
| lvalue ADD_ASSIGN expr
| lvalue SUB_ASSIGN expr
| lvalue ’=’ expr
| FUNC_NAME ’(’ expr_list_opt ’)’
/* no white space allowed before ’(’ */
| BUILTIN_FUNC_NAME ’(’ expr_list_opt ’)’
| BUILTIN_FUNC_NAME
| non_unary_input_function
;

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print_expr_list_opt : /* empty */
| print_expr_list
;

print_expr_list : print_expr
| print_expr_list ’,’ newline_opt print_expr
;

print_expr : unary_print_expr
| non_unary_print_expr
;

unary_print_expr : ’+’ print_expr

| ’-’ print_expr
| unary_print_expr ’ˆ’ print_expr
| unary_print_expr ’*’ print_expr
| unary_print_expr ’/’ print_expr
| unary_print_expr ’%’ print_expr
| unary_print_expr ’+’ print_expr
| unary_print_expr ’-’ print_expr
| unary_print_expr non_unary_print_expr
| unary_print_expr ’˜’ print_expr
| unary_print_expr NO_MATCH print_expr
| unary_print_expr In NAME
| unary_print_expr AND newline_opt print_expr
| unary_print_expr OR newline_opt print_expr
| unary_print_expr ’?’ print_expr ’:’ print_expr
;

non_unary_print_expr : ’(’ expr ’)’

| ’!’ print_expr
| non_unary_print_expr ’ˆ’ print_expr
| non_unary_print_expr ’*’ print_expr
| non_unary_print_expr ’/’ print_expr
| non_unary_print_expr ’%’ print_expr
| non_unary_print_expr ’+’ print_expr
| non_unary_print_expr ’-’ print_expr
| non_unary_print_expr non_unary_print_expr
| non_unary_print_expr ’˜’ print_expr
| non_unary_print_expr NO_MATCH print_expr
| non_unary_print_expr In NAME
| ’(’ multiple_expr_list ’)’ In NAME
| non_unary_print_expr AND newline_opt print_expr
| non_unary_print_expr OR newline_opt print_expr
| non_unary_print_expr ’?’ print_expr ’:’ print_expr
| NUMBER
| STRING
| lvalue
| ERE
| lvalue INCR
| lvalue DECR
| INCR lvalue
| DECR lvalue
| lvalue POW_ASSIGN print_expr
| lvalue MOD_ASSIGN print_expr

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| lvalue MUL_ASSIGN print_expr

| lvalue DIV_ASSIGN print_expr
| lvalue ADD_ASSIGN print_expr
| lvalue SUB_ASSIGN print_expr
| lvalue ’=’ print_expr
| FUNC_NAME ’(’ expr_list_opt ’)’
/* no white space allowed before ’(’ */
| BUILTIN_FUNC_NAME ’(’ expr_list_opt ’)’
| BUILTIN_FUNC_NAME
;

lvalue : NAME
| NAME ’[’ expr_list ’]’
| ’$’ expr
;

non_unary_input_function : simple_get
| simple_get ’<’ expr
| non_unary_expr ’|’ simple_get
;

unary_input_function : unary_expr ’|’ simple_get

;

simple_get : GETLINE
| GETLINE lvalue
;

newline_opt : /* empty */
| newline_opt NEWLINE
;
This grammar has several ambiguities that shall be resolved as follows:
* Operator precedence and associativity shall be as described in Expressions in Decreasing Prece-
dence in awk .

* In case of ambiguity, an else shall be associated with the most immediately preceding if that would
satisfy the grammar.

* In some contexts, a slash ( ’/’ ) that is used to surround an ERE could also be the division operator.
This shall be resolved in such a way that wherever the division operator could appear, a slash is
assumed to be the division operator. (There is no unary division operator.)

One convention that might not be obvious from the formal grammar is where <newline>s are accept-
able. There are several obvious placements such as terminating a statement, and a backslash can be
used to escape <newline>s between any lexical tokens. In addition, <newline>s without backslashes
can follow a comma, an open brace, logical AND operator ( "&&" ), logical OR operator ( "||" ), the
do keyword, the else keyword, and the closing parenthesis of an if, for, or while statement. For exam-
ple:

{ print $1,
$2 }

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Lexical Conventions
The lexical conventions for awk programs, with respect to the preceding grammar, shall be as follows:
1. Except as noted, awk shall recognize the longest possible token or delimiter beginning at a given
point.

2. A comment shall consist of any characters beginning with the number sign character and termi-
nated by, but excluding the next occurrence of, a <newline>. Comments shall have no effect,
except to delimit lexical tokens.

3. The <newline> shall be recognized as the token NEWLINE.

4. A backslash character immediately followed by a <newline> shall have no effect.

5. The token STRING shall represent a string constant. A string constant shall begin with the char-
acter ’ .’ Within a string constant, a backslash character shall be considered to begin an escape
sequence as specified in the table in the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Chap-
ter 5, File Format Notation ( ’\\’, ’\a’, ’\b’, ’\f ’, ’\n’, ’\r’, ’\t’, ’\v’ ). In addition, the escape
sequences in Expressions in Decreasing Precedence in awk shall be recognized. A <newline> shall
not occur within a string constant. A string constant shall be terminated by the first unescaped
occurrence of the character ’’ after the one that begins the string constant. The value of the string
shall be the sequence of all unescaped characters and values of escape sequences between, but not
including, the two delimiting ’’ characters.

6. The token ERE represents an extended regular expression constant. An ERE constant shall begin
with the slash character. Within an ERE constant, a backslash character shall be considered to
begin an escape sequence as specified in the table in the Base Definitions volume of
IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Chapter 5, File Format Notation. In addition, the escape sequences in
Expressions in Decreasing Precedence in awk shall be recognized. The application shall ensure
that a <newline> does not occur within an ERE constant. An ERE constant shall be terminated by
the first unescaped occurrence of the slash character after the one that begins the ERE constant.
The extended regular expression represented by the ERE constant shall be the sequence of all
unescaped characters and values of escape sequences between, but not including, the two delimit-
ing slash characters.

7. A <blank> shall have no effect, except to delimit lexical tokens or within STRING or ERE
tokens.

8. The token NUMBER shall represent a numeric constant. Its form and numeric value shall be
equivalent to either of the tokens floating-constant or integer-constant as specified by the ISO C
standard, with the following exceptions:
a. An integer constant cannot begin with 0x or include the hexadecimal digits ’a’, ’b’, ’c’, ’d’,
’e’, ’f ’, ’A’, ’B’, ’C’, ’D’, ’E’, or ’F’ .

b. The value of an integer constant beginning with 0 shall be taken in decimal rather than octal.

c. An integer constant cannot include a suffix ( ’u’, ’U’, ’l’, or ’L’ ).

d. A floating constant cannot include a suffix ( ’f ’, ’F’, ’l’, or ’L’ ).

If the value is too large or too small to be representable (see Concepts Derived from the ISO C Standard
), the behavior is undefined.

9. A sequence of underscores, digits, and alphabetics from the portable character set (see the Base
Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 6.1, Portable Character Set), beginning with
an underscore or alphabetic, shall be considered a word.

10. The following words are keywords that shall be recognized as individual tokens; the name of the
token is the same as the keyword:

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BEGIN delete END function in printf

break do exit getline next return
continue else for if print while

11. The following words are names of built-in functions and shall be recognized as the token
BUILTIN_FUNC_NAME:

atan2 gsub log split sub toupper

close index match sprintf substr
cos int rand sqrt system
exp length sin srand tolower

The above-listed keywords and names of built-in functions are considered reserved words.

12. The token NAME shall consist of a word that is not a keyword or a name of a built-in function
and is not followed immediately (without any delimiters) by the ’(’ character.

13. The token FUNC_NAME shall consist of a word that is not a keyword or a name of a built-in
function, followed immediately (without any delimiters) by the ’(’ character. The ’(’ character
shall not be included as part of the token.

14. The following two-character sequences shall be recognized as the named tokens:
Token Name Sequence Token Name Sequence
ADD_ASSIGN += NO_MATCH !˜
SUB_ASSIGN -= EQ ==
MUL_ASSIGN *= LE <=
DIV_ASSIGN /= GE >=
MOD_ASSIGN %= NE !=
POW_ASSIGN ˆ= INCR ++
OR || DECR --
AND && APPEND >>

15. The following single characters shall be recognized as tokens whose names are the character:

<newline> { } ( ) [ ] , ; + - * % ˆ ! > < | ? : ˜ $ =

There is a lexical ambiguity between the token ERE and the tokens ’/’ and DIV_ASSIGN. When an
input sequence begins with a slash character in any syntactic context where the token ’/’ or
DIV_ASSIGN could appear as the next token in a valid program, the longer of those two tokens that
can be recognized shall be recognized. In any other syntactic context where the token ERE could
appear as the next token in a valid program, the token ERE shall be recognized.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values shall be returned:
0 All input files were processed successfully.
>0 An error occurred.

The exit status can be altered within the program by using an exit expression.
CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS
If any file operand is specified and the named file cannot be accessed, awk shall write a diagnostic mes-
sage to standard error and terminate without any further action.
If the program specified by either the program operand or a progfile operand is not a valid awk program
(as specified in the EXTENDED DESCRIPTION section), the behavior is undefined.
The following sections are informative.

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APPLICATION USAGE
The index, length, match, and substr functions should not be confused with similar functions in the
ISO C standard; the awk versions deal with characters, while the ISO C standard deals with bytes.
Because the concatenation operation is represented by adjacent expressions rather than an explicit oper-
ator, it is often necessary to use parentheses to enforce the proper evaluation precedence.
EXAMPLES
The awk program specified in the command line is most easily specified within single-quotes (for
example, programs commonly contain characters that are special to the shell, including double-quotes.
In the cases where an awk program contains single-quote characters, it is usually easiest to specify most
of the program as strings within single-quotes concatenated by the shell with quoted single-quote char-
acters. For example:

awk ’/’\’’/ { print "quote:", $0 }’

prints all lines from the standard input containing a single-quote character, prefixed with quote:.
The following are examples of simple awk programs:
1. Write to the standard output all input lines for which field 3 is greater than 5:

$3 > 5

2. Write every tenth line:

(NR % 10) == 0

3. Write any line with a substring matching the regular expression:

/(G|D)(2[0-9][[:alpha:]]*)/

4. Print any line with a substring containing a ’G’ or ’D’, followed by a sequence of digits and char-
acters. This example uses character classes digit and alpha to match language-independent digit
and alphabetic characters respectively:

/(G|D)([[:digit:][:alpha:]]*)/

5. Write any line in which the second field matches the regular expression and the fourth field does
not:

$2 ˜ /xyz/ && $4 !˜ /xyz/

6. Write any line in which the second field contains a backslash:

$2 ˜ /\\/

7. Write any line in which the second field contains a backslash. Note that backslash escapes are
interpreted twice; once in lexical processing of the string and once in processing the regular
expression:

$2 ˜ "\\\\"

8. Write the second to the last and the last field in each line. Separate the fields by a colon:

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{OFS=":";print $(NF-1), $NF}

9. Write the line number and number of fields in each line. The three strings representing the line
number, the colon, and the number of fields are concatenated and that string is written to standard
output:

{print NR ":" NF}

10. Write lines longer than 72 characters:

length($0) > 72

11. Write the first two fields in opposite order separated by OFS:

{ print $2, $1 }

12. Same, with input fields separated by a comma or <space>s and <tab>s, or both:

BEGIN { FS = ",[ \t]*|[ \t]+" }

{ print $2, $1 }

13. Add up the first column, print sum, and average:

{s += $1 }
END {print "sum is ", s, " average is", s/NR}

14. Write fields in reverse order, one per line (many lines out for each line in):

{ for (i = NF; i > 0; --i) print $i }

15. Write all lines between occurrences of the strings start and stop:

/start/, /stop/

16. Write all lines whose first field is different from the previous one:

$1 != prev { print; prev = $1 }

17. Simulate echo:

BEGIN {
for (i = 1; i < ARGC; ++i)
printf("%s%s", ARGV[i], i==ARGC-1?"\n":" ")
}

18. Write the path prefixes contained in the PATH environment variable, one per line:

BEGIN {
n = split (ENVIRON["PATH"], path, ":")
for (i = 1; i <= n; ++i)
print path[i]

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19. If there is a file named input containing page headers of the form:

Page #
and a file named program that contains:

/Page/ { $2 = n++; }
{ print }
then the command line:

awk -f program n=5 input

prints the file input, filling in page numbers starting at 5.

RATIONALE
This description is based on the new awk, "nawk", (see the referenced The AWK Programming Lan-
guage), which introduced a number of new features to the historical awk:
1. New keywords: delete, do, function, return

2. New built-in functions: atan2, close, cos, gsub, match, rand, sin, srand, sub, system

3. New predefined variables: FNR, ARGC, ARGV, RSTART, RLENGTH, SUBSEP

4. New expression operators: ?, :, ,, ˆ

5. The FS variable and the third argument to split, now treated as extended regular expressions.

6. The operator precedence, changed to more closely match the C language. Two examples of code
that operate differently are:

while ( n /= 10 > 1) ...

if (!"wk" ˜ /bwk/) ...

Several features have been added based on newer implementations of awk:

* Multiple instances of -f progfile are permitted.

* The new option -v assignment.

* The new predefined variable ENVIRON.

* New built-in functions toupper and tolower.

* More formatting capabilities are added to printf to match the ISO C standard.

The overall awk syntax has always been based on the C language, with a few features from the shell
command language and other sources. Because of this, it is not completely compatible with any other
language, which has caused confusion for some users. It is not the intent of the standard developers to
address such issues. A few relatively minor changes toward making the language more compatible
with the ISO C standard were made; most of these changes are based on similar changes in recent
implementations, as described above. There remain several C-language conventions that are not in awk.
One of the notable ones is the comma operator, which is commonly used to specify multiple expres-
sions in the C language for statement. Also, there are various places where awk is more restrictive than
the C language regarding the type of expression that can be used in a given context. These limitations
are due to the different features that the awk language does provide.
Regular expressions in awk have been extended somewhat from historical implementations to make

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them a pure superset of extended regular expressions, as defined by IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (see the
Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 9.4, Extended Regular Expressions). The
main extensions are internationalization features and interval expressions. Historical implementations
of awk have long supported backslash escape sequences as an extension to extended regular expres-
sions, and this extension has been retained despite inconsistency with other utilities. The number of
escape sequences recognized in both extended regular expressions and strings has varied (generally
increasing with time) among implementations. The set specified by IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 includes
most sequences known to be supported by popular implementations and by the ISO C standard. One
sequence that is not supported is hexadecimal value escapes beginning with ’\x’ . This would allow val-
ues expressed in more than 9 bits to be used within awk as in the ISO C standard. However, because
this syntax has a non-deterministic length, it does not permit the subsequent character to be a hexadeci-
mal digit. This limitation can be dealt with in the C language by the use of lexical string concatenation.
In the awk language, concatenation could also be a solution for strings, but not for extended regular
expressions (either lexical ERE tokens or strings used dynamically as regular expressions). Because of
this limitation, the feature has not been added to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001.
When a string variable is used in a context where an extended regular expression normally appears
(where the lexical token ERE is used in the grammar) the string does not contain the literal slashes.
Some versions of awk allow the form:

func name(args, ... ) { statements }

This has been deprecated by the authors of the language, who asked that it not be specified.
Historical implementations of awk produce an error if a next statement is executed in a BEGIN action,
and cause awk to terminate if a next statement is executed in an END action. This behavior has not
been documented, and it was not believed that it was necessary to standardize it.
The specification of conversions between string and numeric values is much more detailed than in the
documentation of historical implementations or in the referenced The AWK Programming Language.
Although most of the behavior is designed to be intuitive, the details are necessary to ensure compatible
behavior from different implementations. This is especially important in relational expressions since
the types of the operands determine whether a string or numeric comparison is performed. From the
perspective of an application writer, it is usually sufficient to expect intuitive behavior and to force con-
versions (by adding zero or concatenating a null string) when the type of an expression does not obvi-
ously match what is needed. The intent has been to specify historical practice in almost all cases. The
one exception is that, in historical implementations, variables and constants maintain both string and
numeric values after their original value is converted by any use. This means that referencing a variable
or constant can have unexpected side effects. For example, with historical implementations the follow-
ing program:

{
a = "+2"
b=2
if (NR % 2)
c=a+b
if (a == b)
print "numeric comparison"
else
print "string comparison"
}
would perform a numeric comparison (and output numeric comparison) for each odd-numbered line,
but perform a string comparison (and output string comparison) for each even-numbered line.
IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 ensures that comparisons will be numeric if necessary. With historical imple-
mentations, the following program:

BEGIN {

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AWK(1P) POSIX Programmer’s Manual AWK(1P)

OFMT = "%e"
print 3.14
OFMT = "%f"
print 3.14
}
would output "3.140000e+00" twice, because in the second print statement the constant "3.14" would
have a string value from the previous conversion. IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 requires that the output of the
second print statement be "3.140000" . The behavior of historical implementations was seen as too
unintuitive and unpredictable.
It was pointed out that with the rules contained in early drafts, the following script would print nothing:

BEGIN {
y[1.5] = 1
OFMT = "%e"
print y[1.5]
}
Therefore, a new variable, CONVFMT, was introduced. The OFMT variable is now restricted to
affecting output conversions of numbers to strings and CONVFMT is used for internal conversions,
such as comparisons or array indexing. The default value is the same as that for OFMT, so unless a
program changes CONVFMT (which no historical program would do), it will receive the historical
behavior associated with internal string conversions.
The POSIX awk lexical and syntactic conventions are specified more formally than in other sources.
Again the intent has been to specify historical practice. One convention that may not be obvious from
the formal grammar as in other verbal descriptions is where <newline>s are acceptable. There are sev-
eral obvious placements such as terminating a statement, and a backslash can be used to escape <new-
line>s between any lexical tokens. In addition, <newline>s without backslashes can follow a comma,
an open brace, a logical AND operator ( "&&" ), a logical OR operator ( "||" ), the do keyword, the
else keyword, and the closing parenthesis of an if, for, or while statement. For example:

{ print $1,
$2 }
The requirement that awk add a trailing <newline> to the program argument text is to simplify the
grammar, making it match a text file in form. There is no way for an application or test suite to deter-
mine whether a literal <newline> is added or whether awk simply acts as if it did.
IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 requires several changes from historical implementations in order to support
internationalization. Probably the most subtle of these is the use of the decimal-point character, defined
by the LC_NUMERIC category of the locale, in representations of floating-point numbers. This locale-
specific character is used in recognizing numeric input, in converting between strings and numeric val-
ues, and in formatting output. However, regardless of locale, the period character (the decimal-point
character of the POSIX locale) is the decimal-point character recognized in processing awk programs
(including assignments in command line arguments). This is essentially the same convention as the one
used in the ISO C standard. The difference is that the C language includes the setlocale() function,
which permits an application to modify its locale. Because of this capability, a C application begins
executing with its locale set to the C locale, and only executes in the environment-specified locale after
an explicit call to setlocale(). However, adding such an elaborate new feature to the awk language was
seen as inappropriate for IEEE Std 1003.1-2001. It is possible to execute an awk program explicitly in
any desired locale by setting the environment in the shell.
The undefined behavior resulting from NULs in extended regular expressions allows future extensions
for the GNU gawk program to process binary data.
The behavior in the case of invalid awk programs (including lexical, syntactic, and semantic errors) is
undefined because it was considered overly limiting on implementations to specify. In most cases such
errors can be expected to produce a diagnostic and a non-zero exit status. However, some implementa-
tions may choose to extend the language in ways that make use of certain invalid constructs. Other

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AWK(1P) POSIX Programmer’s Manual AWK(1P)

invalid constructs might be deemed worthy of a warning, but otherwise cause some reasonable behav-
ior. Still other constructs may be very difficult to detect in some implementations. Also, different
implementations might detect a given error during an initial parsing of the program (before reading any
input files) while others might detect it when executing the program after reading some input. Imple-
mentors should be aware that diagnosing errors as early as possible and producing useful diagnostics
can ease debugging of applications, and thus make an implementation more usable.
The unspecified behavior from using multi-character RS values is to allow possible future extensions
based on extended regular expressions used for record separators. Historical implementations take the
first character of the string and ignore the others.
Unspecified behavior when split( string, array, <null>) is used is to allow a proposed future extension
that would split up a string into an array of individual characters.
In the context of the getline function, equally good arguments for different precedences of the | and <
operators can be made. Historical practice has been that:

getline < "a" "b"

is parsed as:

( getline < "a" ) "b"

although many would argue that the intent was that the file ab should be read. However:

getline < "x" + 1

parses as:

getline < ( "x" + 1 )

Similar problems occur with the | version of getline, particularly in combination with $. For example:

$"echo hi" | getline

(This situation is particularly problematic when used in a print statement, where the |getline part might
be a redirection of the print.)
Since in most cases such constructs are not (or at least should not) be used (because they have a natural
ambiguity for which there is no conventional parsing), the meaning of these constructs has been made
explicitly unspecified. (The effect is that a conforming application that runs into the problem must
parenthesize to resolve the ambiguity.) There appeared to be few if any actual uses of such constructs.
Grammars can be written that would cause an error under these circumstances. Where backwards-
compatibility is not a large consideration, implementors may wish to use such grammars.
Some historical implementations have allowed some built-in functions to be called without an argu-
ment list, the result being a default argument list chosen in some "reasonable" way. Use of length as a
synonym for length($0) is the only one of these forms that is thought to be widely known or widely
used; this particular form is documented in various places (for example, most historical awk reference
pages, although not in the referenced The AWK Programming Language) as legitimate practice. With
this exception, default argument lists have always been undocumented and vaguely defined, and it is
not at all clear how (or if) they should be generalized to user-defined functions. They add no useful
functionality and preclude possible future extensions that might need to name functions without calling
them. Not standardizing them seems the simplest course. The standard developers considered that
length merited special treatment, however, since it has been documented in the past and sees possibly
substantial use in historical programs. Accordingly, this usage has been made legitimate, but Issue 5
removed the obsolescent marking for XSI-conforming implementations and many otherwise conform-
ing applications depend on this feature.
In sub and gsub, if repl is a string literal (the lexical token STRING), then two consecutive backslash

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AWK(1P) POSIX Programmer’s Manual AWK(1P)

characters should be used in the string to ensure a single backslash will precede the ampersand when
the resultant string is passed to the function. (For example, to specify one literal ampersand in the
replacement string, use gsub( ERE, "\\&" ).)
Historically the only special character in the repl argument of sub and gsub string functions was the
ampersand ( ’&’ ) character and preceding it with the backslash character was used to turn off its spe-
cial meaning.
The description in the ISO POSIX-2:1993 standard introduced behavior such that the backslash charac-
ter was another special character and it was unspecified whether there were any other special charac-
ters. This description introduced several portability problems, some of which are described below, and
so it has been replaced with the more historical description. Some of the problems include:
* Historically, to create the replacement string, a script could use gsub( ERE, "\\&" ), but with the
ISO POSIX-2:1993 standard wording, it was necessary to use gsub( ERE, "\\\\&" ). Backslash
characters are doubled here because all string literals are subject to lexical analysis, which would
reduce each pair of backslash characters to a single backslash before being passed to gsub.

* Since it was unspecified what the special characters were, for portable scripts to guarantee that
characters are printed literally, each character had to be preceded with a backslash. (For example, a
portable script had to use gsub( ERE, "\\h\\i" ) to produce a replacement string of "hi" .)

The description for comparisons in the ISO POSIX-2:1993 standard did not properly describe historical
practice because of the way numeric strings are compared as numbers. The current rules cause the fol-
lowing code:

if (0 == "000")
print "strange, but true"
else
print "not true"
to do a numeric comparison, causing the if to succeed. It should be intuitively obvious that this is incor-
rect behavior, and indeed, no historical implementation of awk actually behaves this way.
To fix this problem, the definition of numeric string was enhanced to include only those values obtained
from specific circumstances (mostly external sources) where it is not possible to determine unambigu-
ously whether the value is intended to be a string or a numeric.
Variables that are assigned to a numeric string shall also be treated as a numeric string. (For example,
the notion of a numeric string can be propagated across assignments.) In comparisons, all variables
having the uninitialized value are to be treated as a numeric operand evaluating to the numeric value
zero.
Uninitialized variables include all types of variables including scalars, array elements, and fields. The
definition of an uninitialized value in Variables and Special Variables is necessary to describe the value
placed on uninitialized variables and on fields that are valid (for example, < $NF) but have no charac-
ters in them and to describe how these variables are to be used in comparisons. A valid field, such as
$1, that has no characters in it can be obtained from an input line of "\t\t" when FS= ’\t’ . Historically,
the comparison ( $1<10) was done numerically after evaluating $1 to the value zero.
The phrase "... also shall have the numeric value of the numeric string" was removed from several sec-
tions of the ISO POSIX-2:1993 standard because is specifies an unnecessary implementation detail. It
is not necessary for IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 to specify that these objects be assigned two different val-
ues. It is only necessary to specify that these objects may evaluate to two different values depending on
context.
The description of numeric string processing is based on the behavior of the atof() function in the
ISO C standard. While it is not a requirement for an implementation to use this function, many histori-
cal implementations of awk do. In the ISO C standard, floating-point constants use a period as a deci-
mal point character for the language itself, independent of the current locale, but the atof() function and
the associated strtod() function use the decimal point character of the current locale when converting
strings to numeric values. Similarly in awk, floating-point constants in an awk script use a period inde-
pendent of the locale, but input strings use the decimal point character of the locale.

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AWK(1P) POSIX Programmer’s Manual AWK(1P)

FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.
SEE ALSO
Grammar Conventions, grep, lex, sed, the System Interfaces volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, atof(),
exec, popen(), setlocale(), strtod()
COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2003 Edi-
tion, Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open
Group Base Specifications Issue 6, Copyright (C) 2001-2003 by the Institute of Electrical and Electron-
ics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. In the event of any discrepancy between this version and the
original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the
referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online at http://www.open-
group.org/unix/online.html .

IEEE/The Open Group 2003 31