awk

CLI

Pattern-scanning and text-processing language.

Column-based text processing and pattern matching

4 curated recipes · not yet executed by the harness#text #columns #pattern #processing

Recipes

Curated from documentation and usage. Percentages are estimates, not measurements.

Print specific column from output

~99% est.

ps aux | awk '{print $2}'

Sum a column of numbers

~97% est.

awk '{sum+=$1} END {print sum}' file.txt

Filter rows by condition

~97% est.

awk '$3 > 100' data.txt

Parse CSV and print column

~96% est.

awk -F',' '{print $2}' data.csv

Common failures (1)

a field is quoted because it contains a comma — columns shift from that field onward, silently, exit 0awk -F',' is not a CSV parser; use csvcut -c 2 data.csv (pip install csvkit) or mlr --csv --implicit-csv-header --headerless-csv-output cut -f 2 data.csv

Fallbackcsvcut -c 2 data.csv

aptsudo apt install gawk

When to use: Extracting columns, computing sums, reformatting tabular text
Quick examples: awk '{print $1}' file.txt
awk -F',' '{sum+=$2} END {print sum}' data.csv

curl -s https://clihub.com/api/tools/awk | jq '.agentHints.provenRecipes[] | {task, command, verified}'

Or call get_tool with slug awk on the MCP server at https://clihub.com/mcp.

GPL-3.00 views