Awk

Average customer rating:

Definitive
Great manual on a pair of essential tools
excellent tool for Linux administrators
Pretty good
Good tutorial, not a great reference guide

sed & awk (2nd Edition)
Dale Dougherty , and Arnold Robbins
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Classic Shell Scripting
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sed and awk Pocket Reference, 2nd Edition

ASIN: 1565922255

Book Description

sed & awk describes two text processing programs that are mainstays of the UNIX programmer's toolbox. sed is a "stream editor" for editing streams of text that might be too large to edit as a single file, or that might be generated on the fly as part of a larger data processing step. The most common operation done with sed is substitution, replacing one block of text with another. awk is a complete programming language. Unlike many conventional languages, awk is "data driven" -- you specify what kind of data you are interested in and the operations to be performed when that data is found. awk does many things for you, including automatically opening and closing data files, reading records, breaking the records up into fields, and counting the records. While awk provides the features of most conventional programming languages, it also includes some unconventional features, such as extended regular expression matching and associative arrays. sed & awk describes both programs in detail and includes a chapter of example sed and awk scripts. This edition covers features of sed and awk that are mandated by the POSIX standard. This most notably affects awk, where POSIX standardized a new variable, CONVFMT, and new functions, toupper() and tolower(). The CONVFMT variable specifies the conversion format to use when converting numbers to strings (awk used to use OFMT for this purpose). The toupper() and tolower() functions each take a (presumably mixed case) string argument and return a new version of the string with all letters translated to the corresponding case. In addition, this edition covers GNU sed, newly available since the first edition. It also updates the first edition coverage of Bell Labs nawk and GNU awk (gawk), covers mawk, an additional freely available implementation of awk, and briefly discusses three commercial versions of awk, MKS awk, Thompson Automation awk (tawk), and Videosoft (VSAwk).

Customer Reviews:

Definitive.......2007-03-30

I've been into Unix since the 80s... Minix on an Atari ST for the nostalgic... including being system admin on various Unix platforms at work (Solaris, HP-UX, DRS-NX, SCO Unix, BSD, etc.) and this has always been the definite work on both SED and AWK and has helped me out with various admin tasks over the years...

Highly recommended and essential for sysadmins

GMD

Great manual on a pair of essential tools.......2007-01-16

"sed" is one of the very early Unix commands that permitted command line processing of data files. It evolved as the natural successor to the popular "grep" command and is cousin to the later "awk", which is somewhat more flexible. sed and awk are often cited as the progenitors and inspiration for Perl. These two utilities have many things in common, including the use of regular expressions for pattern matching. Since pattern matching is such an important part of their use, the book explains UNIX regular expression syntax very thoroughly. Because there is a natural progression in learning from grep to sed to awk, all three programs are actually covered here, although the focus is on sed and awk.

The focus of this book is on writing scripts for sed and awk that quickly solve an assortment of problems for the user. The book also covers scripts for solving larger problems that require more careful design and development. This book is written in the "old style" of O'Reilly manuals, in that it is a thorough and very understandable tutorial, although it may not be written in the most exciting style in the world. It can also function as a reference manual that you come back to after you learn the mechanics of the language. The following is an overview of the book from the context of the table of contents:

Chapter 1 is an overview of the features and capabilities of sed and awk. Chapter 2 demonstrates their basic operations, showing a progression in functionality from sed to awk. Both share a similar command-line syntax, accepting user instructions in the form of a script. Chapter 3 describes UNIX regular expression syntax in full detail. Many new users are often intimidated by these strange looking expressions, used for pattern matching. The pattern-matching examples in this chapter largely rely on grep and egrep.

Chapter 4 begins three chapters on sed, and covers the basic elements of writing a sed script using only a few sed commands. It also presents a shell script that simplifies invoking sed scripts. Chapters 5 and 6 divide the sed command set into basic and advanced commands. The basic commands parallel manual editing actions, while the advanced commands introduce simple programming capabilities. Among the advanced commands are those that manipulate the hold space, a set-aside temporary buffer.

Chapter 7, begins a five-chapter section on awk, and presents awk's primary features. A number of scripts are explained, including one that modifies the output of the "ls" command. Chapter 8 describes how to use common programming constructs such as conditionals, loops, and arrays. Chapter 9 describes how to use awk's built-in functions as well as how to write user-defined functions. Chapter 10, "The Bottom Drawer", covers a set of miscellaneous awk topics that don't seem to fit anywhere else. It describes how to execute UNIX commands from an awk script and how to direct output to files and pipes. It then offers some brief advice on debugging awk scripts. Chapter 11 describes the original V7 version of awk, the current Bell Labs awk, GNU awk (gawk) from the Free Software Foundation, and mawk, by Michael Brennan. The latter three all have freely available source code. This chapter also describes two commercial implementations, MKS awk and Thomson Automation awk (tawk), as well as VSAwk, which brings awk-like capabilities to the Visual Basic environment.

Chapter 12 presents two long and rather complex awk scripts that together demonstrate nearly all the features of the language. The first script is an interactive spelling checker. The second script processes and formats the index for a book or a master index for a set of books. Chapter 13 presents a number of user-contributed scripts that show different styles and techniques of writing scripts for sed and awk. Each program is introduced with a brief description by the program's author and some comments from the book's author. Then the full program listing is shown. If the author did not supply an example, the book has generated one and describes it after the listing. Finally the book talks briefly about the program, highlighting some interesting points. It's a helpful toolchest of methods.

There are three appendices. The first is a quick reference describing sed's commands and command-line options. The next is a quick reference to awk's command-line options and a full description of its scripting language. The last appendix presents the full listings for the spellcheck.awk script and the masterindex shell script described in Chapter 12.

If you are familiar with O'Reilly's book on Lex and Yacc, this book has a very similar style. It goes through various aspects of the two commands in minute detail with lots of well-commented examples. I highly recommend it if you think you're going to be working with either sed or awk in the future.

excellent tool for Linux administrators.......2007-01-11

A very usefull and powerfull feature of Linux is it's automation. Consider a network where files are copied from desktop computers to a Linux server. Then a command such as "ls -la >> /copiedfiles/myfiles.txt" can be used to list all types of information about those files into a file myfiles.txt in a directory copiedfiles. Then a person can manually go thru the entries and study each file. A program such as awk instead be used to search for certain attributes of the listing in myfiles.txt, such as the size of the file, it's name, it's extension (mp3, sh, txt, doc, asp...), and so on.

This an excellent book. It is well written and contains many usefull and simple and powerfull examples of awk. Awk is a programming language with a syntax similar to c. The main purpose of awk is to do pattern matching in a text file and then to manipulate the results. The book also covers sed, which is basiclaly a programming language to automate editing so that you don't have to do it yourself.

This is book that builds up from one chapter to the next, so you can't just start anywhere and expect to be productive. You have to start right at the beginning, Preface, and learn basically what awk and the book are about. Chapter 1 explains a little about sed being a stream editor, pattern matching, and the kinds of things you can do with awk. Chapter 2 shows different ways of running sed and awk. Chapter 3 explains regular expressions. It is 29 pages long and has a lot of fundamental concepts in it, so you need to take your time, make notes, and study it carefully. Chapter 3 is more or less the basis of the rest of the book so you need to understand it. Chapter 3 ends with Table 3-4 which has usefull regular experssions. Chapters 4,5,6 deal with sed, and becuase I don't use sed, I should not discuss them. Chapter 7 is all about actually writing scripts for awk. In particular it show how to split a field, expressions, and system variables. Note on page 161 and 162, the BEGIN rule is like a pre-processor to a main loop that occurs after BEGIN{} and before END{}. So after the BEGIN{} statements, awk will automatically read the records until it finds the end of file (EOF). Then it executes END{} and awk stops processing. That part is not explained very well, other than earlier in the book it says (somewhere) that awk automatically keeps reading in things until end of file. Chapter 8 has conditionals, loops and arrays, which are quite similar to those in c. Chapter 9 has functions including string functions.Chapter 10 has an assortment of things, the most important for me being on page 239, Directing Output to Files and Pipes. I have not used anything in chapters 11, 12 13 so I have no comment on them, nor Appendix A. APpendix B has a Quick Reference for awk and it is quite usefull.

A most excellent book of great help to any Unix environment.

Pretty good.......2006-12-06

I agree with the sentiments expressed by others: this is a good book to learn from, but it's horrible for flipping through in search of a quick answer. It would have been nice if they would have put the content from the smaller pocket reference in the back as an appendix, but then I guess they wouldn't get to sell you two books.

Good tutorial, not a great reference guide.......2006-11-05

The style in which this book is written is designed more as a teaching aid that would guide a beginner step by step. But as a quick reference guide it's difficult to use. An example of a great reference book from the O'Reilly series is Perl by Christiansen et al. It would have been preferable if the sed & awk book used a similar format.

Average customer rating:

Excellent book to learn the basics
A good intro on Unix shell scripting and the problems it solves
Nice overview of Bourne/sh scripting
Okay
Practical and useful

Classic Shell Scripting
Arnold Robbins , and Nelson H.F. Beebe
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0596005954

Book Description

Shell scripting skills never go out of style. It's the shell that unlocks the real potential of Unix. Shell scripting is essential for Unix users and system administrators-a way to quickly harness and customize the full power of any Unix system. With shell scripts, you can combine the fundamental Unix text and file processing commands to crunch data and automate repetitive tasks. But beneath this simple promise lies a treacherous ocean of variations in Unix commands and standards. Classic Shell Scripting is written to help you reliably navigate these tricky waters. Writing shell scripts requires more than just a knowledge of the shell language, it also requires familiarity with the individual Unix programs: why each one is there, how to use them by themselves, and in combination with the other programs. The authors are intimately familiar with the tips and tricks that can be used to create excellent scripts, as well as the traps that can make your best effort a bad shell script. With Classic Shell Scripting you'll avoid hours of wasted effort. You'll learn not only write useful shell scripts, but how to do it properly and portably. The ability to program and customize the shell quickly, reliably, and portably to get the best out of any individual system is an important skill for anyone operating and maintaining Unix or Linux systems. Classic Shell Scripting gives you everything you need to master these essential skills.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent book to learn the basics.......2007-03-13

I've scrolled through lots of books, there is so much information out there, but this book has a tendency to keep it simple and to the point. It has good illustrative examples that not only are useful but also serve as a good practice guide.

A good intro on Unix shell scripting and the problems it solves.......2007-02-16

The purpose of this handy little book is to help someone who is working with Unix through the labyrinth of tools available and learn how and when to use them. It is important to note what is mentioned in the preface - "Throughout this book, we use the term Unix to mean not only commercial variants of the original Unix system, such as Solaris, Mac OS X, and HP-UX, but also the freely available workalike systems, such as GNU/Linux and the various BSD systems: BSD/OS, NetBSD, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD." I quote the book because the word "Unix" is about as descriptive as the word "car". The intended audience is anyone who is computer literate, already knows how to program, and is regularly faced with diverse problems in the workplace that must be solved with Unix tools. This book should give you a taste of which tool to turn to and when.

This book can be divided basically into two halves. The first half is a tutorial on writing Unix scripts. The book starts with a brief history of the Unix language and the philosophy behind Unix tools. Slowly, each chapter builds up your skill at script writing. You are shown how to differentiate between shells, how to work with text extensively, how to use loops, pipelines, variables, and decision statements, and how to work with files. There are detailed example scripts at every step along the way. By the end of chapter seven, you should know enough about basic shell scripting to be dangerous.

Starting in chapter 8, you are showed more application-related information. First, Chapter 8 shows and discusses some ready-made scripts for some tasks for which there is no out-of-the-box Unix solution. Some of the handy solutions shown are for path searching and automating software builds. Chapter 9 is a crash course on awk, and is aptly named. It is just enough to be dangerous. You learn how to solve common text processing problems with awk, but you'll need more resources to be really knowledgable. Chapter 10 explains the usage of common commands for listing files, modifying their timestamps, creating temporary files, finding files in a directory hierarchy, applying commands to a list of files, determining the amount of filesystem space used, and comparing files. Next there are two applied chapters showing you how to merge several databases and how to perform spellchecking by using scripting. Chapter 13 changes the subject a bit and talks about the concept of processes in Unix and how you can use their statistics to accomplish a number of monitoring and control tasks. Chapter 14 talks about problems you may run into if you try to take advantage of shell-language extensions, while Chapter 15 addresses the issue of writing secure scripts to the extent it is possible to do so. Writing man pages, and the basics of the Unix filesystem are the subjects of the last two chapters of the book.

I would say it is a good modern introduction to the subject of shell scripting and Unix tools and how to use them. It doesn't dive deeply into any particular topic, but it will get you started by broadly introducing you to the problems most Unix script writers and system admins face regularly and how to get started solving those problems. I highly recommend it for that purpose.

Nice overview of Bourne/sh scripting.......2006-11-17

This book provides a nice overview of the Bourne/sh shell's commands. I wish there were more examples with complete scripts. Korn shell users might want to consider "Korn Shell: Programs for Your Survival at Work" by Larry L. Smith. Bash users might want to consider "Bash Shell: Essential Programs for Your Survival at Work" by Larry L. Smith. Some of the examples in Randal K. Michael's "Mastering UNIX Shell Scripting" are also helpful.

Okay.......2006-03-12

I would say this is a pretty good book that covers it's subject very well, buti didn't use it much because i had also bought Unix in a Nutshell, Fourth Edition, which covered the basics and differences between the shells briefly, which was all i needed at the time. but i looked through this and read some stuff that helped and it is a good book if you plan on doing extended shell scripting. it was just a little more than i actually needed

Practical and useful .......2005-09-20

Great book. The emphasis is nicely split between actually using the shell itself and the whole supporting cast of unix tools (sed, awk, cut, join, sort etc.) The idea of carefully crafting solutions using the unix toolbox mindset is key. I also like the fact he doesn't try to teach to multiple shells, but first tries to emphasize portability by sticking mainly to a POSIX standard, and only later adds info about non standard shell topics. If I could only have one book on shell scripting, this would be it. The best description is 'Practical'.

Average customer rating:

Excellent tutorial & reference that zeroes in on awk
really good reference
This book is an essential for people writing unix scripts and doing system administration
Most Complete Coverage of Awk
awk programming

Effective awk Programming (3rd Edition)
Arnold Robbins
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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sed & awk (2nd Edition)
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ASIN: 0596000707

Amazon.com

For anyone who writes scripts in the awk family of languages, the third edition of Effective awk Programming provides an in-depth guide to processing text files with plenty of working sample code. Whether you are starting out with awk or are an experienced developer, this book will help you extend the reach of your awk scripts.

This tutorial covers the entire spectrum of awk script development: From the basics of opening, searching, and transforming text files, to a comprehensive tutorial for regular expressions, to more advanced features like internetworking. The focus is on the practical side of creating and running awk scripts, and there's plenty of hands-on advice for installing and running today's awk (and gawk).

The book begins with the fundamentals of awk for opening and transforming text flat files. The coverage of regular expressions, from simple rules for matching text to more advanced options, is particularly solid. You learn how to add variables and expressions for more intelligent awk scripts, plus how to parse data into records and fields. You'll also find out how to redirect output from awk scripts to other programs, a useful technique that can cause awk to get a lot more done in real applications.

Later, you learn several valuable sample awk scripts that mimic existing Unix utilities (like grep, id, and split), plus samples for counting words in documents and printing mailing labels, and even a stream editor. This grab bag of sample code lets you try out the techniques presented earlier in the book. Other sections look at support for networking in today's gawk; for example, how gawk can read and write to URLs on the network almost just as easily as local files. Full sample code will teach the beginner or expert how to get productive with networks and awk. Final appendices trace the evolution of the awk language and show you how to download and install gawk.

Suitable for beginner and experienced awk developers, Effective awk Programming, Third Edition, is an extremely worthwhile source of information on a wide range of programming techniques for today's awk. --Richard Dragan

<B>Topics covered:</B> <ul>

Introduction to the awk programming language

Running awk scripts

Basic file processing

Tutorial for regular expressions

Strategies for matching text

Dynamic regular expressions

Parsing data into records and lines (including separating fields and handling multiple-line records)

Using print and printf for printed output with awk (including format specifiers)

Redirecting awk scripts output to other processes

Basic and advanced awk expressions (constants, variables, and function calls)

Patterns

Shell variables and actions

Arrays (including multidimensional arrays and sorting)

Built-in and custom awk functions

Internationalizing and localizing awk scripts

Advanced gawk (communicating with other processes and networking programming)

Running awk and gawk

Sample awk scripts

Internetworking with awk

History and evolution of awk

Downloading and installing gawk</ul>

Book Description

Effective awk Programming,3rd Edition, focuses entirely on awk, exploring it in the greatest depth of the three awk titles we carry. It's an excellent companion piece to the more broadly focused second edition. This book provides complete coverage of the gawk 3.1 language as well as the most up-to-date coverage of the POSIX standard for awk available anywhere. Author Arnold Robbins clearly distinguishes standard awk features from GNU awk (gawk)-specific features, shines light into many of the "dark corners" of the language (areas to watch out for when programming), and devotes two full chapters to example programs. A brand new chapter is devoted to TCP/IP networking with gawk. He includes a summary of how the awk language evolved. The book also covers: <ul>

Internationalization of gawk </li>

Interfacing to i18n at the awk level </li>

Two-way pipes </li>

TCP/IP networking via the two-way pipe interface </li>

The new PROCINFO array, which provides information about running gawk </li>

Profiling and pretty-printing awk programs </li> </ul> In addition to covering the awk language, this book serves as the official "User's Guide" for the GNU implementation of awk (gawk), describing in an integrated fashion the extensions available to the System V Release 4 version of awk that are also available in gawk. As the official gawk User's Guide, this book will also be available electronically, and can be freely copied and distributed under the terms of the Free Software Foundation's Free Documentation License (FDL). A portion of the proceeds from sales of this book will go to the Free Software Foundation to support further development of free and open source software. The third edition of Effective awk Programming is a GNU Manual and is published by O'Reilly & Associates under the Free Software Foundation's Free Documentation License (FDL). A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book is donated to the Free Software Foundation to further development of GNU software. This book is also available in electronic form; you have the freedom to modify this GNU Manual, like GNU software. Copies published by the Free Software Foundation raise funds for GNU development.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent tutorial & reference that zeroes in on awk.......2007-01-17

This book explains both the awk language and how to run the awk utility. You should already be familiar with basic system commands, such as cat and ls, as well as basic shell facilities, such as input/output redirection and pipes. This book describes the awk language in general and also the particular implementation of awk called gawk. gawk runs on a broad range of Unix systems and has also been ported to Mac OS X, MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows, and VMS.

Many people are familiar with O'Reilly's book on sed and awk, but not this book. If you want to zero in on awk and its capabilities, this is really the better of the two books. It makes an excellent tutorial and reference for system administrators and anyone else that wants to use awk to extract and format text. The following is a description of the book from the context of the table of contents:

Chapter 1. The awk language and gawk - talks about the basics including how to run awk, when you should use awk, and starts you off with a few simple examples.

Chapter 2. Regular expressions - introduces regular expressions in general, and in particular the flavors supported by POSIX awk and gawk.

Chapter 3 Reading Input Files - describes how awk reads your data. It introduces the concepts of records and fields, as well as the getline command. I/O redirection is first described here.

Chapter 4. Printing Output - Besides basic and formatted printing, this chapter also covers I/O redirections to files and pipes, introduces the special filenames that gawk processes internally, and discusses the close built-in function.

Chapter 5. Expressions - describes expressions, which are the basic building blocks of awk patterns and actions.

Chapter 6. Patterns, Actions, and Variables - Each awk statement consists of a pattern with an associated action. This chapter describes how you build patterns and actions, what kinds of things you can do within actions, and awk's built-in variables.

Chapter 7. Arrays in awk - describes how arrays work in awk, how to use array elements, how to scan through every element in an array, and how to remove array elements. It also describes how awk simulates multidimensional arrays, as well as some of the less obvious points about array usage. The chapter finishes with a discussion of gawk's facility for sorting an array based on its indices.

Chapter 8. Functions - describes awk's built-in functions, which fall into three categories: numeric, string, and I/O. gawk provides additional groups of functions to work with values that represent time, do bit manipulation, and internationalize and localize programs.

Chapter 9. Internationalization with gawk - describes the underlying library gawk uses for internationalization, as well as how gawk makes internationalization features available at the awk program level. Having internationalization available at the awk level gives software developers additional flexibility - they are no longer required to write in C when internationalization is a requirement.

Chapter 10. Advanced Features of gawk - a "grab bag" of items that are otherwise unrelated to each other. First, a command-line option allows gawk to recognize nondecimal numbers in input data, not just in awk programs. Next, two-way I/O, discussed briefly in earlier parts of this book, is described in full detail, along with the basics of TCP/IP networking and BSD portal files. Finally, gawk can profile an awk program, making it possible to tune it for performance.

Chapter 11. Running awk and gawk - covers how to run awk, both POSIX-standard and gawk-specific command-line options, and what awk and gawk do with non-option arguments. It then proceeds to cover how gawk searches for source files, obsolete options and/or features, and known bugs in gawk. This chapter rounds out the discussion of awk as a program and as a language. While a number of the options and features described here were discussed in passing earlier in the book, this chapter provides the full details.

Chapter 12. A Library of awk Functions - One valuable way to learn a new programming language is to read programs in that language. To that end, this chapter and Chapter 13 provide a good-sized body of code for you to read, and hopefully, to learn from.

Chapter 13. Practical awk Programs - presents a potpourri of awk programs for your reading enjoyment. The first part describes how to run the programs presented in this chapter. The second presents awk versions of several common POSIX utilities. These are programs that you are hopefully already familiar with, and therefore, whose problems are understood. By reimplementing these programs in awk, you can focus on the awk-related aspects of solving the programming problem.

Chapter 14. Internetworking with gawk - describes gawk's networking features in depth, including a number of interesting examples and the reusable core of a gawk-based web server. The chapter is adapted from "TCP/IP Internetworking with gawk", by Jürgen Kahrs and Arnold Robbins, which is a separate document distributed with gawk.

Thus chapters 1-11 form a tutorial and reference on awk itself, and the last three chapters are additional material for reference or your own personal toolchest of programs. The last chapter is more of a curiosity than anything, since I don't know anyone who does internetworking with gawk, but it is still interesting material. I highly recommend this book if you plan to use awk extensively.

really good reference.......2007-01-06

really simple to understand, and quick to get started. could have a bit more on regexp, but can easily be paired with a dedicated text. the examples are clear, the explanations are concise, and the content is well organized and presented.

This book is an essential for people writing unix scripts and doing system administration.......2006-02-22

Awk is a powerful tool to perform search, and pattern matching on the strings/files.

This book is an essential for people writing unix scripts and doing system administration.

It gives you insight on how things work, and has very nice examples and tricks to perform the tasks.

Mostly the majority of the tasks are covered in the beginning, and the deep rooted tasks, are covered in the later chapters.

Most Complete Coverage of Awk.......2002-02-02

Awk is one of those handy Unix tools with which you can easily impress people. Using a simple

/pattern/ { action }

syntax, you can construct powerful one-liners. Do you want to how much time in total you spent surfing the Internet? Here it is:

awk '/Connect time/ { s += $8 } END { print s }' /var/log/messages

It doesn't get much shorter in any other programming language, does it? Need to strip text of HTML tags? Need a frequency count of words in a text? Awk is the perfect tool for tasks like this. With its pattern-action structure, powerful regular expression mechanism, associative arrays and basic program flow control, it provides a powerful tool for manipulating flat text files. Even though other scripting languages may be richer in features, there exists a niche where Awk is just the right tool to do the job.

Arnold Robbins, the author of this book as well as of several other books on Awk, serves also as the maintainer of GNU Awk (gawk for short), the most influential version of Awk available today. With the version 3.10, released in 2001, GNU Awk became richer for a handful of new extensions over traditional Awk, most important among them are the TCP/IP networking and the support for internationalization. All new extensions are described in the book. How successful these new extensions will be is doubtful, however. Networking scripting niche is already well covered with Perl and Python, and internationalization doesn't really matter much in short throw-away scripts Awk is usually used for.

With all due respect to the creators of Awk and their book (Alfred V. Aho, Peter J. Weinberger, Brian W. Kernighan, The Awk Programming Language, Addison-Wesley, 1988), I have to say that "Effective Awk Programming" is probably the best Awk tutorial on the market today. If you are serious about learning Awk, you shouldn't be without it. If you are still hesitating whether it wouldn't be wiser investing those 28 USD elsewhere, here is chance to read it before you buy it: install GNU Awk 3.10, and the Texinfo source of the book comes with it. But sooner or later you will find O'Reilly RepKover binding too tempting...

awk programming.......2001-05-19

This book is being picked up by the O'Reilly people. I have many of the O'Reilly books on my book shelf. There will be a third edition due out in July with Robbins as the author. I read though this book and thought it as good or better than the "Sed & awk" book that O'Reilly presently has out. Robbins is also an author on this book. I thought the book to be better than the "AWK programming language" by Aho, Kerninghan and Weinberger, the original authors of the AWK language. I recommend the book to beginers as I am.

sed and awk Pocket Reference, 2nd Edition

Average customer rating:

a must have
Key text searching programs
A super fast lightweight reference
All you need to use sed or awk well.
Unix in a nutshell

sed and awk Pocket Reference, 2nd Edition
Arnold Robbins
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
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ASIN: 0596003528

Book Description

For people who create and modify text files, sed and awk are power tools for editing. sed, awk, and regular expressions allow programmers and system administrators to automate editing tasks that need to be performed on one or more files, to simplify the task of performing the same edits on multiple files, and to write conversion programs. The sed & awk Pocket Reference is a companion volume to sed & awk, Second Edition, Unix in a Nutshell, Third Edition, and Effective awk Programming, Third Edition. This new edition has expanded coverage of gawk (GNU awk), and includes sections on: <ul> <li type="disc">An overview of sed and awk?s command line syntax</li> <li type="disc">Alphabetical summaries of commands, including nawk and gawk</li> <li type="disc">Profiling with pgawk</li> <li type="disc">Coprocesses and sockets with gawk</li> <li type="disc">Internationalization with gawk</li> <li type="disc">A listing of resources for sed and awk users </li> </ul> This small book is a handy reference guide to the information presented in the larger volumes. It presents a concise summary of regular expressions and pattern matching, and summaries of sed and awk. Arnold Robbins, an Atlanta native now happily living in Israel, is a professional programmer and technical author and coauthor of various O'Reilly Unix titles. He has been working with Unix systems since 1980, and currently maintains gawk and its documentation.

Customer Reviews:

a must have.......2004-03-19

This little book is great. I've only had it for about a week. I needed to match some text today with a pattern that was a little bit more involved than my usual simple needs. I flipped through a few pages and found some examples that quickly helped me derive the search pattern I needed in a few minutes.

I have the full "sed & awk" second edition book, but I went to the pocket reference instead. I would not have been able to find what I needed in the larger book as quickly.

Some have complained about some of the pocket references lacking indexes. This one doesn't have one, but it's so easy to use that it doesn't need one. Just flip and few pages and you'll find what you need. As far as I'm concerned time is money. This little book has paid for itself in one weeks use.

Key text searching programs.......2004-03-07

Sed and awk are the mainstay for those of you who write shell scripts on unix/linux machines that manipulate text files. It is difficult to overstate the usefulness of these two programs.

So O'Reilly and Robbins decided to help you by providing this pocketbook reference that encapsulates the online help for the programs. The book is aimed at someone who programs, but still prefers a traditional hardcopy reference as an aid to human memory. It assumes that you basically already know how to use the programs, but just need some reminder as to the exact syntax and all the possible options.

A super fast lightweight reference.......2000-12-20

I use this pocket reference more then any other reference for sed and awk. This is mostly a syntax guide for folks who already know sed and awk. If you don't know sed and awk, get the Ellen Quigleys 'Unix Shells'(for beginners) followed by O'Reillies 'Sed and Awk' reference. (Big book.) I tend to forget exactly how to do something, so I will just quickly look at my bookmarked pocket reference, and flip quickly to an example of syntax to get that bash code going correctly. If your desk has as many papers and books on it as mine, this is nice for freeing up some elbow room, while keeping the big books on the bookshelf most of the time.

All you need to use sed or awk well........2000-09-13

I bought this "book" because I am writing a program that deals extensively with strings and text (natural language parsing). I was having some difficulty mastering sed, and understanding how it works. For example, "s/[^A-Za-z]//" was not working (to remove non alpha chars). After five pages in this little gem, I knew what I needed. A trailing "g".

The book is rich with examples, explanations, and really just cuts straight to the chase.

This is not a book for the casual user. It is, after all, a reference, not a tutorial. Unix users (and administrators) who already have a basic grasp of regular expressions and just what sed and awk are (and grep/egrep too) will find this most rewarding.

While I have a hard time paying this much for what amounts to less than toaster oven instructions, it is absolutely invaluable to me, and it doesnt take up space on my desk or bookshelf.

Unix in a nutshell.......2000-05-27

well I find it informative and almost all of the 'unix' realted programs where in there.

Average customer rating:

Put this in your toolbox
Amazing little language and book that will grow with you
10 Stars
Classic Reference text on AWK
The awk bible a must have tome for all Unix power scripters

The AWK Programming Language
Alfred V. Aho , Brian W. Kernighan , and Peter J. Weinberger
Manufacturer: Addison Wesley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Textbook Binding

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Effective awk Programming (3rd Edition)
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Perl Cookbook, Second Edition

ASIN: 020107981X

Customer Reviews:

Put this in your toolbox.......2007-01-30

I've become a big fan of Awk. Some people may tell you that Awk is outdated and no longer useful; not with other languages such as Perl and Ruby available. Well, Awk does one thing and does it well. It does it "fast enough" most of the time, and does it with a very small language.

Perl and Ruby are fine, but if you lean towards "small is beautiful", you must learn Awk. For times when you need it, it's a Godsend. I've used it recently to automatically generate SQL insert statements from some flat files and to do automatic code generation for larger languages.

Some of the best tools have survived the test of time.

In this book, I feel like I learned all the things I need to know about Awk - all the way from beginner to advanced. It's a classic. Not a lot of books get five stars for me. This book fulfills it's goals perfectly, so deserves a perfect rating.

Amazing little language and book that will grow with you.......2006-03-05

In Unix today, several scripting languages exist: awk, perl, tcl and python. Awk is a small, easy-to-learn, yet powerful programming language, and is language of choice for quick, think- and analyze-on-the-fly tasks. This book is written by the inventors of this wonderful language. It provides an excellent introduction to the language, with many practical examples for day-to-day use. Over many years, it has also served as a good reference to the language. In addition, this book gives concise introduction to numerous fundamental algorithms in computer science (interpreter, calculator, parser, sorting, graph algorithms, ..), which I consult for complex tasks even today.

Always a joy to read! Highly recommended.

10 Stars.......2002-04-03

I wish I can give 10 stars for this book. This is a bible.

Classic Reference text on AWK.......2002-02-13

This is THE bible for awk users. If you refuse to use perl, which incorporated most of awk, or have to maintain old awk scripts then this is the text. I like the O'Reilly text for learning the basics, but after that you need this guide. For some tasks awk is the premier solution, for others, use awk as part of the solution along with perl and a shell script. Still a cool language. And this book is very helpful for both beginning intermediate programmers of awk and advanced users.

The awk bible a must have tome for all Unix power scripters.......2000-10-26

I second the feeling here, this awk book is the most concise, clear and useful scripting book on unix period with the exception of perl. Its also a job life saver. At work we cant use perl on our unix servers because of management attitudes so awk and sh are the only tools to script with. Become a Unix power scripter with this cool book!

Average customer rating:

UNIX CD Bookshelf, 3.0
Inc. O'Reilly & Associates
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0596003927

Book Description

If you've heard the phrase, "You can't take it with you," you may have thought, sadly, that it referred to your trusted shelf of O'Reilly Unix books. Thorough, reliable, and all encompassing, these books are unfortunately not especially portable en masse--unless, of course, you have a copy of the Unix CD Bookshelf. The Unix CD Bookshelf keeps all the books you've come to rely on right at your fingertips, wherever you may go. Version 3 provides convenient online access to seven indispensable books:<ul>

Unix Power Tools, 3rd Edition</li>

Learning the Unix Operating System, 5th Edition</li>

Learning the vi Editor, 6th Edition</li>

Mac OS X for Unix Geeks</li>

Learning the Korn Shell, 2nd Edition</li>

sed & awk, 2nd Edition</li>

Unix in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition</li></ul> --all from your CD-ROM drive. The CD has a master index for all seven books and a powerful search engine--and all the text is extensively hyper-linked--so you can find what you're looking for quickly. Packaged with the hard copy of Unix in a Nutshell, Third Edition, it takes up less than two inches of bookshelf space, and when you're on the run, you can just grab the CD and go. The seven books included on the CD --well over 3,000 pages of useful O'Reilly reference and tutorials-- if purchased separately, would cost more than $330 (US), but the Unix CD Bookshelf, Version 3 retails for only $129.95. The Unix CD Bookshelf packs a stack of essential Unix books into one comprehensive, immensely convenient, and portable small package. Next time they say that you can't take it with you, you'll know better.

UNIX AWK and SED Programmer's Interactive Workbook (UNIX Interactive Workbook)

Average customer rating:

Not a book for a learner
Difficult to understand
Peter knows how to teach !
Hard to Understand
The Best AWK and UNIX training manual!

UNIX AWK and SED Programmer's Interactive Workbook (UNIX Interactive Workbook)
Peter Patsis
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall PTR
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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sed & awk (2nd Edition)
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Serious Creativity: Using the Power of Lateral Thinking to Create New Ideas
Trans-Siberian Handbook: Seventh Edition of the Guide to the World's Longest Railway Journey (Trailblazer Guides)

ASIN: 0130826758

Customer Reviews:

Not a book for a learner.......2003-03-08

It was really hard to understand as a beginner like other reviewers. It makes you keep wonder why you don't follow and don't get much explanation. Well, the first chapter was okay as the introduction of regular expressions, but you get lost by the time you try to understand the excersises in chapter 2. Have you ever had the feeling that you feel like you want to go back again and again but you still goes far and far from the point? It is frustrationg. However, this kind of book could be useful for the teachers, definitely not for learners.

Difficult to understand.......2003-02-27

I was very disappointed in this book. The descriptions and samples are very tough to follow, needing re-reading many times to follow. The Web site link does not work, so answers to the "test your thinking" sections cannot be found, nor the sample files. I suggest looking elsewhere and not get this book. It is just too painful to wade through, and is fond of making simple subjects much to obtuse.

Peter knows how to teach !.......2002-03-29

I am an Oracle DBA. So far sed is enough for my file processing chores.Since I may need AWK later on, I am very interested in learing AWK now.
Thanks a great deal, Peter ! I bought the book yesterday. It cut
down my fear about AWK. The way Peter shows AWK makes it easy to understand ! Many people are great programmers but to write a book, you MUST be a be a great TEACHER besides a great expert in this field. Pater is the right one.
I had this in my mind on my way home:AWK is not hard , all you need is to have Peter as the teacher !

Peter: What is your teaching background if you don't mind ?

Prentice Hall: I love your 'interactive workbook', I bought almost half of all your titiles !
Thank you for choosing excellent teachers to write those books ! This is an absolutelly successsful project! I hope to see more books like this !

Hard to Understand.......2000-12-20

The idea of a workbook format was good, but the concepts weren't explained well. I read sections over many times only to think, why didn't it just say that? It was a frustrating book to read. You could probably get the information faster and more painlessly from another book.

The Best AWK and UNIX training manual!.......2000-06-12

As a computer consultant, I sometimes need to train 'folks' that haven't had too much time in front of a computer. For those souls that have grown used to Windows, UNIX has the potential to strike fear in a way that I've seldom seen duplicated. This text offers the BEST environment for teaching UNIX and AWK that I have seen.

There are UNIX and AWK reference books galore, but none of them take a systematic approach to TEACHING the subject, (no, not even teach yourself, or the Dummies versions). This book reviews each command and ends with a generous question section. (Not just one or two questions at a high level, and not just one really complicated question - the questions build very nicely to the hardest issues.)

If you are looking for a reference book, this will do, though there are others that I would prefer, but if you are learning UNIX and AWK on your own, or looking to teach it to someone else, this book gets my highest recommendation. I have given it now to everyone I have trained and all have had great success with it. I would feel entirely comfortable handing this book to a trainee, and with no further instruction allowing them to code when they've finished. " An absolute gift"

Spacebloom: A Field Guide to Cosmic Xflora
Average customer rating:

Imaginative future

Fab Future

Very cool

Bursting with Creativity

Don't miss your chance to stop and smell the Spaceblooms!

Spacebloom: A Field Guide to Cosmic Xflora
Awk Ro
Manufacturer: Etculli Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0973022205

Customer Reviews:

Imaginative future .......2006-05-27

I just discovered this imaginative future history of space-born cosmic flora.
Right from the start, the first paragaph of the book makes a strikingly powerful comment:
"Spaceblooms emerged at the end of a remarkably long period of unprecedented growth in human knowledge. Ninety percent of all patents ever issued - perhaps a poor, but quantifiable, way of measuring knowledge - were granted in the last 150 years. While some of the technologies used today have roots in the 21st century or earlier, many of their manifestations were not envisioned until much later. The successful population of Moon and the building of the new settlements are achievements that would not have been possible without the newclear or unimbler technology, without ifasto materials or atmospheric solutions, and without the millions of discoveries, inventions and innovations. The roots of this knowledge explosion can be traced to the middle of the 21st century, when, after many decades of empty rhetoric and grandiose posturing, a worldwide focus on equal access to all levels of education was realized."

There is a lot of commentary here that relates to our current society while describing a future one. It's a very interesting version of science fiction, and a lot of it is just good straight poetry, beautifully written. And it's all enhanced by the art - the graphics rock.

Fab Future.......2006-03-15

Great Book. Brilliant Images. Unconventional book design - you can read it upside down (you'll get the point if you see the book for yourself)!

I hadn't heard about this book at all, and a friend recently gave me a copy. I have no idea how he even knew about it, but I'm glad he dug it up. It's a book that imagines a future quite different from the typical science fiction view, and is also chock full of beautiful graphics, charts, pictorials etc. Its got a technical and sometimes funny commentary on the future where there are thousands of flowers in space (initially man-made but now self-producing) and the authors have created this entire universe, classification, and language for dealing with these "Xflora".

Going through it, it's interesting to imagine a future where you could go into space, travelling about seeing these flowers, individually and in vast fields, in the universe's 'sky'. I totally recommend this trip.

Very cool.......2006-03-14

This is one cool book. Very unusual but very original. It combines designs of what seem like plants, but are actually much more as you read into them, in a universe in our future. It's also really cool, because it lets you imagine all kinds of possibilities, so as you're reading the detailed descriptions of each of these flora, you begin thinking of more, and what each could be capable of, or what each could solve of a need in our world. I think more than anything, this book is a collection of ideas that have a lot of depth beyond what appears on the page as simple descriptives.

The format is very simple. It has been written like a formal guide with a general introduction, and then each of the flora is given a 2-page spread describing the properties, usages, amusing trivia, and a recipe for each (yes, apparently they are all edible too, or at least have edible parts). Through these plants, one is shown glimpses of society as it would be in the 23rd century, which is quite unusual, since it is like science fiction, except it is not presented in a traditional story-like manner. It does, however, have a very high level of detail, and I like to consume it in bits and pieces since you have to make your mind stretch out there, as it is.

The most striking part of this book is the colour, the art work, the amazing level of detail. The quality is top-notch. I don't think I have yet seen a book of 3D computer art that makes each image look so photographic. The play with the images makes for beautiful viewing.

Bursting with Creativity.......2004-08-09

I loved this book! The images are truly amazing and literally burst off the page. Koulekouli and Zippinia are two of my favourite blooms. I have never seen anything similar and would love to have the opportunity to speak with the illustrator / author to find out how he conceptualized the idea for this incredible project. The text is also very cleverly conceived and very witty in parts but cannot be easily digested in one sitting. I find that there is something new that appears each time I look at this book and I look forward to more publications from the talented creator.

Don't miss your chance to stop and smell the Spaceblooms!.......2004-07-27

So frequently in life, we are encouraged to stop and smell the roses. In 2267, Awk Ro asks us to stop, smell and, indeed, taste the Spaceblooms - a unique collection of thirty-three cosmic flora of no natural garden variety. In this imaginary cosmic landscape, I found a wealth of beauty, humour and inspiration. These Spaceblooms are no ordinary flowers. And this is no ordinary book. Truly a testament to the limitless boundaries of the human imagination - Spacebloom is destined to become the blueprint for astronauts looking for floral life beyond Earth.

Linux Scripting. Prozesssteuerung, Shellprogrammierung, awk, Perl.

Average customer rating:

Linux Scripting. Prozesssteuerung, Shellprogrammierung, awk, Perl.
Ulrich Cuber , and Rainer Haselier
Manufacturer: Franzis Verlag
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 3772371248

Average customer rating:

The GNU Awk User's Guide
Arnold Robbins
Manufacturer: Free Software Foundation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 1882114264

Programming Book:

Programming Book

Programming Book