How to use awk to select data from commands and scripts Your email has been sent Image: iStock/Inimma-IS Must-read developer coverage What Powers Your Databases? Take This DZone Survey Today!

I use awk all the time, but generally only to conveniently pull a particular field out of data that I’m workin with. Regardless of the separator used, awk makes it easy to extract just what you need.

It is. I've converted a few machines here in just the last few months, even one where the HD was so shot full of holes only the recovery partition made it onto the replacement SSD and I wound up ...

Is prone to causing confusion for newbies since they are inevitably going to question what happens if the "empty file" does not exist, and what happens once the first command has written the output to ...