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gawk — GNU version of awk, a versatile programming language for working on files. See also: `awk`. More inf

Submitted by: @import:tldr-pages·Mar 2, 2026·

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Problem

How to use the gawk command: GNU version of awk, a versatile programming language for working on files. See also: awk. More information: <https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.html>.

Solution

gawk — GNU version of awk, a versatile programming language for working on files. See also: awk. More information: <https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.html>.

Print the fifth column (a.k.a. field) in a space-separated file:

gawk '{print $5}' {{path/to/file}}

Print the second column of the lines containing "foo" in a space-separated file:

gawk '/{{foo}}/ {print $2}' {{path/to/file}}

Print the last column of each line in a file, using a comma (instead of space) as a field separator:

gawk {{[-F|--field-separator]}} ',' '{print $NF}' {{path/to/file}}

Sum the values in the first column of a file and print the total:

gawk '{s+=$1} END {print s}' {{path/to/file}}

Print every third line starting from the first line:

gawk 'NR%3==1' {{path/to/file}}

Print different values based on conditions:

gawk '{if ($1 == "foo") print "Exact match foo"; else if ($1 ~ "bar") print "Partial match bar"; else print "Baz"}' {{path/to/file}}

Print all the lines which the 10th column value is between a min and a max:

gawk '($10 >= {{min_value}} && $10 <= {{max_value}})' {{path/to/file}}

Print table of users with UID >=1000 with header and formatted output, using colon as separator (%-20s mean: 20 left-align string characters, %6s means: 6 right-align string characters):

gawk 'BEGIN {FS=":";printf "%-20s %6s %25s\n", "Name", "UID", "Shell"} $4 >= 1000 {printf "%-20s %6d %25s\n", $1, $4, $7}' /etc/passwd

Code Snippets

Print the fifth column (a.k.a. field) in a space-separated file

gawk '{print $5}' {{path/to/file}}

Print the second column of the lines containing "foo" in a space-separated file

gawk '/{{foo}}/ {print $2}' {{path/to/file}}

Print the last column of each line in a file, using a comma (instead of space) as a field separator

gawk {{[-F|--field-separator]}} ',' '{print $NF}' {{path/to/file}}

Sum the values in the first column of a file and print the total

gawk '{s+=$1} END {print s}' {{path/to/file}}

Print every third line starting from the first line

gawk 'NR%3==1' {{path/to/file}}

Context

tldr-pages: common/gawk

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