Awk is a powerful unix utility. $ awk -F":" '{ print "username: " $1 "\t\tuid:" $3" }' /etc/passwd -F=Field Seperator $1=first field seperated by ":" Awk can use a program which is a file with awk instructions. $ awk -f program.awk inputfile A sample awk program file program.awk is as follows: 1- BEGIN { 2- FS=":" 3- x=0 4- } 5- { print $1 } 6- $1 ~ /regex/ { x++} 7- END { 8- print x 9- } BEGIN is the place for commands to be executed before inputfile is being processed. Here we set FS(field seperator) to : and initiate variable x to 0. Line 5 prints all matching 1st columns. In Line 6 if $1 is similar to /regex/ then variable x is raised by 1. At the END after processing input file variable x is printed to output. FS,RS(Record Seperator),OFS(Output Field Seperator),ORS and NF(Number of Fields) are other special variables in awk. Reference: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-awk3.html
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