Features of awk

The awk utility:

• treats lines of a text as database records, which can be divided into fields.
• can manipulate the text file database in a variety of ways.
• can analyse and extract data.
• makes use of mathematical and string operators.
• uses common programming constructs, including [[loop?]]s and [[conditional?]] constructs.
• Programs written in awk are generally quite small, making them easy to compose and utilize
• awk uses a line orientated language, rather than [[freeform?]] syntax
• is [[data_driven?]]
• uses [[filename_association?]] rather than numbered streams for file input and output
• supports multiple [[assignment?]]s from a single statement
• the hashbang mechanism requires a switch in order to operate