What is awkJapanese

awk is a programming language, named after its three original authors:

they write:

  Awk is a convenient and expressive programming language that can be
  applied to a wide variety of computing and data-manipulation tasks.

The title of the book uses `AWK', but the contents of the book use `awk' (except at the beginning of sentences, as above). I will attempt to do the same (except perhaps at the beginning of sentences, as above).

Most implementations of awk are interpreters which read your awk source program and parse it and act on it directly.

Some vendors have developed awk compilers which will produce an executable that may be run stand-alone -- thus, the end user does not have access to the source code. There are also various awk->C converters which allow you to achieve the same functionality (by compiling the resulting C code later).

One of the most popular compilers, from Thompson Automation, continues to be the subject of many positive posts in the group.

    I don't really want to start a reviews section, but it may be
    appropriate.  I think it's of general interest, and a good thing
    for the FAQ, but I don't want to be given any grief by a negative
    review I didn't write just because I'm distributing it.

    if you have a review you'd like me to put a pointer to, please
    inform me -- I already have some pointers of this form listed.

comp.lang.awk is not particularly about sed; for sed discussion, see the sed FAQ (and other documents) for answers to common questions and group recommendations:

this all seems unrelated to AWK Engineering AG at http://www.awk.ch