How do i use basic level awk?

[blackrhino]

This explains using awk at a very basic level.

The way awk works is similar to sed, it will execute your instructions on one line at a time across the entire file.

awk 'awk commands' files

or if your awk commands are in a script, you can call it like this.

awk -f script files

Example on the command line.

Still using our sample file called data_file

hamster, furry little creature, 2 hamster drive
donkey, back breaking helper, 8 donkey jacket road
horse,  top racer, 12 Horse throat Lane
badger,  night rider, 15 Badger Close 
cow,  love eating grass all day, 16 Moofield Aveune
sheep, can you take this coat off, 6 Wool road

The awk commands have to be in curly brackets, as there is no pattern match awk applied the awk commands to all lines

$ awk '{print $1}' data_file 
hamster,
donkey,
horse,
badger,
cow,
sheep,

To take the comma off the end we use the awk "-F" field separator options

$ awk -F, '{print $1}' data_file
hamster
donkey
horse
badger
cow
sheep