AWK is a general purpose
programming language that is designed for processing text-based data, either in files or data streams. The name AWK is derived from the
surnames of its authors —
Alfred Aho,
Peter Weinberger, and
Brian Kernighan; however, it is not commonly pronounced as a string of separate letters but rather to sound the same as the name of the bird,
auk (which acts as an emblem of the language such as on The AWK Programming Language book cover). awk, when written in all lowercase letters, refers to the
Unix or
Plan 9 program that runs other programs written in the AWK programming language.
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