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Lesser known history of the resistor and it's color value code
Written by December 17, 2023

Creative awk examples.

Weird Article

Creative AWK Examples for Experienced Linux Engineers

AWK is a powerful text processing tool that can be used for a wide variety of tasks. It is often used for simple tasks such as counting lines or words in a file, but it can also be used for more complex tasks such as parsing log files or generating reports.

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In this blog post, I will share some creative AWK examples that demonstrate the power and versatility of this tool. These examples are intended for experienced Linux engineers who are looking for new and innovative ways to use AWK.

1. Parse a CSV File

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One common task that AWK can be used for is parsing CSV files. CSV files are a common way to store tabular data, and they can be easily parsed using AWK.

The following AWK script can be used to parse a CSV file and print the contents of each field:

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“`awk
BEGIN {
FS = “,”
}

{
for (i = 1; i <= NF; i++) {
printf(“%st”, $i)
}
printf(“n”)
}
“`

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This script will print the contents of each field in the CSV file, separated by a tab character.

2. Generate a Report

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AWK can also be used to generate reports. For example, the following AWK script can be used to generate a report of the number of lines in each file in a directory:

“`awk
BEGIN {
FS = “/”
}

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{
if ($NF ~ /.txt$/) {
lines[$NF] += NR
}
}

END {
for (file in lines) {
printf(“%s: %d linesn”, file, lines[file])
}
}
“`

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This script will print a report of the number of lines in each text file in the current directory.

3. Parse a Log File

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AWK can also be used to parse log files. For example, the following AWK script can be used to parse a web server log file and print the number of requests for each URL:

“`awk
BEGIN {
FS = ” “
}

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{
requests[$7]++
}

END {
for (url in requests) {
printf(“%s: %d requestsn”, url, requests[url])
}
}
“`

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This script will print a report of the number of requests for each URL in the log file.

4. Create a Custom Command

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AWK can also be used to create custom commands. For example, the following AWK script can be used to create a command that prints the first line of a file:

“`awk
#!/usr/bin/awk

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BEGIN {
exit(NR == 1)
}
“`

This script can be saved as a file with the name `firstline` and made executable. It can then be used to print the first line of a file by running the following command:

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“`
firstline filename
“`

5. Conclusion

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AWK is a powerful and versatile tool that can be used for a wide variety of tasks. The examples in this blog post demonstrate some of the creative ways that AWK can be used.

I encourage you to experiment with AWK and find new and innovative ways to use it. AWK can be a valuable tool for any Linux engineer.

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