---
title: Awk
---

## What is Awk?
Awk (also written as awk and AWK) is a programming language used for text processing and typically used as a data extraction tool. Awk comes with most UNIX-based operating systems, and also with some other operating systems, such as Windows 95/98/NT.
AWK was created at Bell Labs in the 1970s, and its name is derived from the surnames of its authors **Alfred Aho**, **Peter Weinberger**, and **Brian Kernighan**.

An awk program is a sequence of pattern-action pairs, it reads the input a line at a time and the line is scanned for each pattern in the program and if positive, it performs the associated action. Awk can be used interactively or from script files.

## Hello World in Awk

```awk
BEGIN { print "Hello, world!" }
```
The Code is self explanatory , the **BEGIN** keyword denotes the beginning of a awk program.



### More Information:
* [Awk - A useful little language](https://dev.to/rrampage/awk---a-useful-little-language-2fhf)
* [AWK - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AWK)
* [Source Code on GitHub](https://github.com/onetrueawk/awk)