Long time Irreal readers know that I’m a fan of the AWK language. Whatever OS you’re using, AWK is sure to be available. It’s installed by default on all Unix/Linux systems and may be on Windows as well. Linux systems probably use gawk by default but even it’s usually linked to awk. There is, in any event, at least one version for your system.
A year ago, I wrote about a Brailsford & Kernighan video where they talk about AWK and how Kernighan was updating it to support Unicode [1, 2]. Kernighan mentioned that as part of that effort he was updating the AWK book. The original book was written 1988 and while you can still get it, the price is exorbitant. Now that work is completed and the new book will be released on 2023-10-01. That’s good news for younger engineers who don’t have $100 to spend on the original.
I haven’t seen the new book, of course, but the original was excellent. Towards the front of the book they had a series of AWK one-liners that performed all sorts of useful tasks. Kernighan has said that he, Aho, and Weinberger had imagined that that was the way the utility would mostly be used but it’s been used for all sorts of more complicated programs, often by Kernighan himself. You can see some of those at the book link above.
I think it’s wonderful that AWK, a program dating from the 1970s, is still under development and that there’s a brand new book documenting it and its use.