Effective awk Programming: Universal Text Processing and Pattern Matching

This book arrived in the condition described earlier than expected.

If you want to learn gawk, this is the way to go!!! Exceptional book! I have 'sed & awk', and was running into issues/questions writing a program with bash and gawk. I emailed the author, and he was super helpful (within 2 days!!) in pointing out this book, as a more current treatment of gawk. And indeed, it's like these two books don't describe the same language; there's no comparison in terms of approach and level of detail. Don't short-change yourself (as I was going to do) by trying to rely on 'sed & awk' to save a few bucks. Anything by Arnold Robbins is worth its weight in gold.NB - if you have gawk questions, don't write the author, but instead use help-gawk@gnu.org, which is a newer mailing list for people like us. Happy hacking!!

AWK has become a niche language for a long time. The volume and content are unneeded for a command-line tool bundled with a domain-specific language. Instead, AWK one-liners and AWK-based scripts are more useful currently.

Disclaimer**!!!The examples in this book use a syntax compatible with BASH Shell. If you're a windows user (as I am) don't bother trying to adopt it in Command Prompt or Powershell. The syntax isn't the same. After about a week of trying to read this and find the "Command Prompt" way to do the examples, I ultimately downloaded UBUNTU for Windows which is basically BASH for Windows.After that, the examples worked exactly as described! :)#GameChanger

Great reference on the AWK utility. Anyone who does serious shell scripting on UNIX needs to know AWK.

Even if you're already an AWK expert, you will find this book quite useful.

I do wish it would have started with "If you don't have access to perl, start here"Working in AWK is a bit like thinking in ladder logic, but using text and a funky syntax. It's hard to find a system that doesn't have AWK, and I like the natural regex syntax (I'm sick of having to escape my controls in sed.)

This manual is excellent for those with some basic knowledge of awk. I particularly liked the real-world and complicated examples. Too many books these days provide only basic examples, while this author uses complicated real-world examples for some explanations. That being said, I believe that there could have been more advanced examples, as one assumes a basic knowledge of awk, prior to purchasing this book.

I think the book focus on AWK as a regular programming language, instead of highlighting its strengths as file manipulation utiliity. FNR command is variable cover, not one example showing how to use multiple files input, which is I think how most of us use it. Goes for modularization technic instead of showing the capabilities of short one line programs. The AWK on this book definitely has nothing to do with the one I use in real life, hope no body gets the wrong impression on the AWK capabilities because of this book.

Trotz allen Fortschritts haben sich manche Tools über Jahrzehnte hinweg bewährt und sind immer noch quasi konkurrenzlos. Wie mächtig awk wirklich ist, sieht man in diesem Buch.Mit etwas Programmiererfahrung in irgendeiner Sprache ist dieses Buch auch als Einstiegswerk in die Welt von awk geeignet. Wer es nicht ganz so genau wissen will, erhält mit dem Buch sed&awk (ebenfalls von Arnold Robbins) die Hilfe für zwei Tools zum Preis von einem.

I purchased the book as I already owned Sed & Awk and needed to learn Awk more in depth. This is one of the best programming books that i've ever come accross, well structered with great examples.

Excellent book for learning the ins & outs of AWK and .nix programming. Big shout out to the seller for being able to pick up this classic at such a great price with excellent customer service.

Excellent book! I am learning a lot from it.