Awk pattern matching

AWK its big ... a full on programming language really

a GooD place to get more info is in the standard *nix 'man' command

Examples

to make a list of all the users and shell's that are in use on your box
 (not a verry practical example as there are non user enrtys in your passwd file but...)

cat /etc/passwd | awk -F: ' {print $1 " " $7 }'

Explanation

-F: = use : as the separator ie use -F, for a csv file awk uses a space as standard
print = print to StdOut
   $1 = the first varible found...
   " " = a space... well any string
   $7 = the 7th varible found

This example is nice in a file ... it will serch through InPut.txt and put all lines that match into  OutPut.txt...

#!/bin/ksh

awk -F, ' {
  if ( $2 ~ /^StartString/ && $2 ~ /EndString$/ ) {
    print $2
  }
} '  InPut.txt > OutPut.txt



  Explanation

 -F = as above use , as separator 
 if = well standard programing stuff really, if (this is true) { then do this}
  $2 = 2nd varible
  ~ = regexe ie patern matching (
     ^ = start of varible
     $ = end of string )
 && = logical and (for strings)

 basicly, if $2 starts with StartString and ends with EndString then print it out...

also see: Awk

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