Editing AWK (section)

=== Calculate word frequencies ===

[[Word frequency]] using [[associative array]]s:
<syntaxhighlight lang="awk">
BEGIN {
    FS="[^a-zA-Z]+"
}
{
    for (i=1; i<=NF; i++)
        words[tolower($i)]++
}
END {
    for (i in words)
        print i, words[i]
}
</syntaxhighlight>

The BEGIN block sets the field separator to any sequence of non-alphabetic characters. Separators can be regular expressions. After that, we get to a bare action, which performs the action on every input line. In this case, for every field on the line, we add one to the number of times that word, first converted to lowercase, appears. Finally, in the END block, we print the words with their frequencies. The line
 for (i in words)
creates a loop that goes through the array ''words'', setting ''i'' to each ''subscript'' of the array. This is different from most languages, where such a loop goes through each ''value'' in the array. The loop thus prints out each word followed by its frequency count. <code>tolower</code> was an addition to the One True awk (see below) made after the book was published.