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2 Running awk and gawk

This chapter covers how to run awk, both POSIX-standard and gawk-specific command-line options, and what awk and gawk do with nonoption arguments. It then proceeds to cover how gawk searches for source files, reading standard input along with other files, gawk’s environment variables, gawk’s exit status, using include files, and obsolete and undocumented options and/or features.

Many of the options and features described here are discussed in more detail later in the Web page; feel free to skip over things in this chapter that don’t interest you right now.

• Command Line  How to run awk.
• Options  Command-line options and their meanings.
• Other Arguments  Input file names and variable assignments.
• Naming Standard Input  How to specify standard input with other files.
• Environment Variables  The environment variables gawk uses.
• Exit Status  gawk’s exit status.
• Include Files  Including other files into your program.
• Loading Shared Libraries  Loading shared libraries into your program.
• Obsolete  Obsolete Options and/or features.
• Undocumented  Undocumented Options and Features.
• Invoking Summary  Invocation summary.