Editing AWK (section)

==History==
According to Brian Kernighan, one of the goals of AWK was to have a tool that would easily manipulate both numbers and strings. AWK was also inspired by [[Marc Rochkind]]'s programming language that was used to search for patterns in input data, and was implemented using [[yacc]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vT_J6xc-Az0 | archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211122/vT_J6xc-Az0| archive-date=2021-11-22 | url-status=live|title=UNIX Special: Profs Kernighan & Brailsford |work=Computerphile |date=September 30, 2015 }}{{cbignore}}</ref>

As one of the early tools to appear in [[Version 7 Unix]], AWK added computational features to a Unix [[pipeline (Unix)|pipeline]] besides the [[Bourne shell]], the only scripting language available in a standard Unix environment. It is one of the mandatory utilities of the [[Single UNIX Specification]],<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.unix.org/version3/apis/cu.html |title=The Single UNIX Specification, Version 3, Utilities Interface Table |access-date=2005-12-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180105030249/http://www.unix.org/version3/apis/cu.html |archive-date=2018-01-05 |url-status=dead }}</ref> and is required by the [[Linux Standard Base]] specification.<ref>{{cite tech report |url=https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/LSB_4.0.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic.html#COMMAND |title=Linux Standard Base Core Specification 4.0 |chapter=Chapter 15. Commands and Utilities |institution=Linux Foundation |date=2008 |access-date=2020-02-01 |archive-date=2019-10-16 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191016015828/https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/LSB_4.0.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic.html#COMMAND |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 1983, AWK was one of several UNIX tools available for Charles River Data Systems' [[UNOS (operating system)|UNOS]] operating system under [[Bell Laboratories]] license.<ref>{{Cite book|year=1983|title=The Insider's Guide To The Universe|publisher=Charles River Data Systems, Inc.|url=https://www.1000bit.it/ad/bro/charles/CharlesRiverSystem-Universe.pdf|page=13}}</ref>

AWK was significantly revised and expanded in 1985–88, resulting in the [[Gawk (GNU package)|GNU AWK]] implementation written by Paul Rubin, [[Jay Fenlason]], and [[Richard Stallman]], released in 1988.<ref name=robbins/> GNU AWK may be the most widely deployed version<ref>{{cite book|last1=Dougherty|first1=Dale|last2=Robbins|first2=Arnold|title=sed & awk|date=1997|publisher=O'Reilly|location=Sebastopol, CA|isbn=1-565-92225-5|page=221|edition=2nd}}</ref> because it is included with GNU-based Linux packages. GNU AWK has been maintained solely by [[Arnold Robbins]] since 1994.<ref name=robbins>{{cite web |url=http://www.skeeve.com/gnu-awk-and-me-2014.pdf |title=The GNU Project and Me: 27 Years with GNU AWK |website=skeeve.com |first=Arnold |last=Robbins |date=March 2014 |access-date=October 4, 2014 |archive-date=October 6, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141006081656/http://www.skeeve.com/gnu-awk-and-me-2014.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> [[Brian Kernighan]]'s [[nawk]] (New AWK) source was first released in 1993 unpublicized, and publicly since the late 1990s; many BSD systems use it to avoid the GPL license.<ref name=robbins/>

AWK was preceded by [[sed]] (1974). Both were designed for text processing. They share the line-oriented, data-driven paradigm, and are particularly suited to writing [[one-liner program]]s, due to the implicit [[main loop]] and current line variables. The power and terseness of early AWK programs – notably the powerful regular expression handling and conciseness due to implicit variables, which facilitate one-liners – together with the limitations of AWK at the time, were important inspirations for the [[Perl]] language (1987). In the 1990s, Perl became very popular, competing with AWK in the niche of Unix text-processing languages.