AWK is a domain-specific language designed for text processing, typically used as a data extraction and reporting tool, taking its name from the surname initials of its authors, Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger and Brian Kernighan. AWK was created at Bell Laboratories in the 1970s, and programs describe patterns and actions performed when a line of input matches a pattern, making it well suited for processing structured, line-oriented text such as log files and tabular data.
Facts
First Released ParadigmData-driven, procedural, scripting 1 SignificanceIntroduced a compact, data-driven approach to text processing that shaped later Unix tools and directly influenced Perl. 1 AWK
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Influenced
JavaScript's own infobox lists AWK among its influences (alongside Java, Scheme, Self, HyperTalk). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript
"Perl takes hashes ('associative arrays') from AWK and regular expressions from sed." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl
Sources
1. Wikipedia: AWK
Wikimedia FoundationHistory sectionQuote, History section
AWK was originally written in 1977 and distributed with Version 7 Unix.
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