.\" $OpenBSD: awk.1,v 1.11 2003/02/18 07:51:08 jmc Exp $ .\" EX/EE is a Bd .\" .\" Copyright (C) Lucent Technologies 1997 .\" All Rights Reserved .\" .\" Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and .\" its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby .\" granted, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all .\" copies and that both that the copyright notice and this .\" permission notice and warranty disclaimer appear in supporting .\" documentation, and that the name Lucent Technologies or any of .\" its entities not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining .\" to distribution of the software without specific, written prior .\" permission. .\" .\" LUCENT DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE, .\" INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. .\" IN NO EVENT SHALL LUCENT OR ANY OF ITS ENTITIES BE LIABLE FOR ANY .\" SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES .\" WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER .\" IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, .\" ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF .\" THIS SOFTWARE. .\" .Dd June 29, 1996 .Dt AWK 1 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm awk .Nd pattern-directed scanning and processing language .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm awk .Op Fl F Ar fs .Op Fl v Ar var=value .Op Fl safe .Op Fl mr Ar n .Op Fl mf Ar n .Op Ar prog | Fl f Ar progfile .Ar .Nm nawk .Ar ... .Sh DESCRIPTION .Nm scans each input .Ar file for lines that match any of a set of patterns specified literally in .Ar prog or in one or more files specified as .Fl f Ar progfile . With each pattern there can be an associated action that will be performed when a line of a .Ar file matches the pattern. Each line is matched against the pattern portion of every pattern-action statement; the associated action is performed for each matched pattern. The file name .Sq Pa \- means the standard input. Any .Ar file of the form .Ar var=value is treated as an assignment, not a filename, and is executed at the time it would have been opened if it were a filename. The option .Fl v followed by .Ar var=value is an assignment to be done before .Ar prog is executed; any number of .Fl v options may be present. The .Fl F Ar fs option defines the input field separator to be the regular expression .Ar fs . The .Fl safe option disables file output .Po .Ic print Ic > , .Ic print Ic >> , .Pc process creation .Po .Ar cmd Ic \&| getline , .Ic print \&| , system .Pc and access to the environment .Pq Va ENVIRON . This is a first (and not very reliable) approximation to a .Dq safe version of .Nm awk . .Pp An input line is normally made up of fields separated by whitespace, or by regular expression .Va FS . The fields are denoted .Va $1 , $2 , ... , while .Va $0 refers to the entire line. If .Va FS is null, the input line is split into one field per character. .Pp To compensate for inadequate implementation of storage management, the .Fl mr option can be used to set the maximum size of the input record, and the .Fl mf option to set the maximum number of fields. .Pp A pattern-action statement has the form .Pp .D1 Ar pattern Ic \&{ Ar action Ic \&} .Pp A missing .Ic \&{ Ar action Ic \&} means print the line; a missing pattern always matches. Pattern-action statements are separated by newlines or semicolons. .Pp An action is a sequence of statements. A statement can be one of the following: .Pp .Bd -unfilled -offset indent .Ic if ( Xo .Ar expression ) statement \& .Op Ic else Ar statement .Xc .Ic while ( Ar expression ) statement .Ic for ( Xo .Ar expression ; expression ; expression ) statement .Xc .Ic for ( Xo .Ar var Ic in Ar array ) statement .Xc .Ic do Ar statement Ic while ( Ar expression ) .Ic break .Ic continue .Ic { Oo Ar statement ... Oc Ic \& } .Ar expression Xo .No "# commonly" \& .Ar var Ic = Ar expression .Xc .Ic print Xo .Op Ar expression-list .Op Ic > Ns Ar expression .Xc .Ic printf Ar format Xo .Op Ar ... , expression-list .Op Ic > Ns Ar expression .Xc .Ic return Op Ar expression .Ic next Xo .No "# skip remaining patterns on this input line" .Xc .Ic nextfile Xo .No "# skip rest of this file, open next, start at top" .Xc .Ic delete Ar array Ns Xo .Ic \&[ Ns Ar expression Ns Ic \&] .No \& "# delete an array element" .Xc .Ic delete Ar array Xo .No "# delete all elements of array" .Xc .Ic exit Xo .Op Ar expression .No \& "# exit immediately; status is" Ar expression .Xc .Ed .Pp Statements are terminated by semicolons, newlines or right braces. An empty .Ar expression-list stands for .Ar $0 . String constants are quoted .Li \&"" , with the usual C escapes recognized within. Expressions take on string or numeric values as appropriate, and are built using the operators .Ic + \- * / % ^ (exponentiation), and concatenation (indicated by whitespace). The operators .Ic ! ++ \-\- += \-= *= /= %= ^= > >= < <= == != ?: are also available in expressions. Variables may be scalars, array elements (denoted .Li x[i] ) or fields. Variables are initialized to the null string. Array subscripts may be any string, not necessarily numeric; this allows for a form of associative memory. Multiple subscripts such as .Li [i,j,k] are permitted; the constituents are concatenated, separated by the value of .Va SUBSEP . .Pp The .Ic print statement prints its arguments on the standard output (or on a file if .Ic > Ns Ar file or .Ic >> Ns Ar file is present or on a pipe if .Ic \&| Ar cmd is present), separated by the current output field separator, and terminated by the output record separator. .Ar file and .Ar cmd may be literal names or parenthesized expressions; identical string values in different statements denote the same open file. The .Ic printf statement formats its expression list according to the format (see .Xr printf 3 ) . The built-in function .Fn close expr closes the file or pipe .Fa expr . The built-in function .Fn fflush expr flushes any buffered output for the file or pipe .Fa expr . .Pp The mathematical functions .Fn exp , .Fn log , .Fn sqrt , .Fn sin , .Fn cos , and .Fn atan2 are built in. Other built-in functions: .Pp .Bl -tag -width Fn .It Fn length the length of its argument taken as a string, or of .Va $0 if no argument. .It Fn rand random number on (0,1) .It Fn srand sets seed for .Fn rand and returns the previous seed. .It Fn int truncates to an integer value. .It Fn substr s m n the .Fa n Ns No -character substring of .Fa s that begins at position .Fa m counted from 1. .It Fn index s t the position in .Fa s where the string .Fa t occurs, or 0 if it does not. .It Fn match s r the position in .Fa s where the regular expression .Fa r occurs, or 0 if it does not. The variables .Va RSTART and .Va RLENGTH are set to the position and length of the matched string. .It Fn split s a fs splits the string .Fa s into array elements .Va a[1] , a[2] , ... , a[n] and returns .Va n . The separation is done with the regular expression .Ar fs or with the field separator .Va FS if .Ar fs is not given. An empty string as field separator splits the string into one array element per character. .It Fn sub r t s substitutes .Fa t for the first occurrence of the regular expression .Fa r in the string .Fa s . If .Fa s is not given, .Va $0 is used. .It Fn gsub r t s same as .Fn sub except that all occurrences of the regular expression are replaced; .Fn sub and .Fn gsub return the number of replacements. .It Fn sprintf fmt expr ... the string resulting from formatting .Fa expr , ... according to the .Xr printf 3 format .Fa fmt . .It Fn system cmd executes .Fa cmd and returns its exit status. .It Fn tolower str returns a copy of .Fa str with all upper-case characters translated to their corresponding lower-case equivalents. .It Fn toupper str returns a copy of .Fa str with all lower-case characters translated to their corresponding upper-case equivalents. .El .Pp The .Sq function .Ic getline sets .Va $0 to the next input record from the current input file; .Ic getline < Ar file sets .Va $0 to the next record from .Ar file . .Ic getline Va x sets variable .Va x instead. Finally, .Ar cmd Ic \&| getline pipes the output of .Ar cmd into .Ic getline ; each call of .Ic getline returns the next line of output from .Ar cmd . In all cases, .Ic getline returns 1 for a successful input, 0 for end of file, and \-1 for an error. .Pp Patterns are arbitrary Boolean combinations (with .Ic "! || &&" ) of regular expressions and relational expressions. Regular expressions are as in .Xr egrep 1 . Isolated regular expressions in a pattern apply to the entire line. Regular expressions may also occur in relational expressions, using the operators .Ic ~ and .Ic !~ . .Ic / Ns Ar re Ns Ic / is a constant regular expression; any string (constant or variable) may be used as a regular expression, except in the position of an isolated regular expression in a pattern. .Pp A pattern may consist of two patterns separated by a comma; in this case, the action is performed for all lines from an occurrence of the first pattern though an occurrence of the second. .Pp A relational expression is one of the following: .Bd -unfilled -offset indent .Ar expression matchop regular-expression .Ar expression relop expression .Ar expression Ic in Ar array-name .Ic \&( Ns Xo .Ar expr , expr , \&... Ns Ic \&) in .Ar \& array-name .Xc .Ed where a .Ar relop is any of the six relational operators in C, and a .Ar matchop is either .Ic ~ (matches) or .Ic !~ (does not match). A conditional is an arithmetic expression, a relational expression, or a Boolean combination of these. .Pp The special patterns .Ic BEGIN and .Ic END may be used to capture control before the first input line is read and after the last. .Ic BEGIN and .Ic END do not combine with other patterns. .Pp Variable names with special meanings: .Pp .Bl -tag -width Va -compact .It Va CONVFMT conversion format used when converting numbers (default .Qq Li %.6g ) .It Va FS regular expression used to separate fields; also settable by option .Fl F Ar fs . .It Va NF number of fields in the current record .It Va NR ordinal number of the current record .It Va FNR ordinal number of the current record in the current file .It Va FILENAME the name of the current input file .It Va RS input record separator (default newline) .It Va OFS output field separator (default blank) .It Va ORS output record separator (default newline) .It Va OFMT output format for numbers (default .Qq Li %.6g ) .It Va SUBSEP separates multiple subscripts (default 034) .It Va ARGC argument count, assignable .It Va ARGV argument array, assignable; non-null members are taken as filenames .It Va ENVIRON array of environment variables; subscripts are names. .El .Pp Functions may be defined (at the position of a pattern-action statement) thusly: .Pp .Dl function foo(a, b, c) { ...; return x } .Pp Parameters are passed by value if scalar and by reference if array name; functions may be called recursively. Parameters are local to the function; all other variables are global. Thus local variables may be created by providing excess parameters in the function definition. .Sh EXAMPLES .Dl length($0) > 72 Print lines longer than 72 characters. .Pp .Dl { print $2, $1 } Print first two fields in opposite order. .Pp .Bd -literal -offset indent BEGIN { FS = ",[ \et]*|[ \et]+" } { print $2, $1 } .Ed Same, with input fields separated by comma and/or blanks and tabs. .Pp .Bd -literal -offset indent { s += $1 } END { print "sum is", s, " average is", s/NR } .Ed Add up first column, print sum and average. .Pp .Dl /start/, /stop/ Print all lines between start/stop pairs. .Pp .Bd -literal -offset indent BEGIN { # Simulate echo(1) for (i = 1; i < ARGC; i++) printf "%s ", ARGV[i] printf "\en" exit } .Ed .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr lex 1 , .Xr sed 1 .Rs .%A A. V. Aho .%A B. W. Kernighan .%A P. J. Weinberger .%T The AWK Programming Language .%I Addison-Wesley .%D 1988 .%O ISBN 0-201-07981-X .Re .Sh HISTORY AT&T .Nm by B. W. Kernighan was updated for .Bx 4.4 and again in 1996. .Sh BUGS There are no explicit conversions between numbers and strings. To force an expression to be treated as a number add 0 to it; to force it to be treated as a string concatenate .Li \&"" to it. .Pp The scope rules for variables in functions are a botch; the syntax is worse.