awk

Definition

A command-line text-processing tool that processes files line by line, splitting fields and applying programs.

Example in context

"awk '{print $1, $7}' access.log prints the IP address (field 1) and HTTP status (field 7) from each log line."

Related terms

• grep — A command-line utility searching text using patterns (strings or regex) and printing matching lines.
• sed — Stream Editor — a command-line tool applying text transformations (substitute, delete, insert) to each line.
• Pipe — The | operator passing the output of one command as input to the next, enabling command chaining.