A pattern-scanning and text-processing language. In other words it is a programmable report generator. Its name comes from the initials of the authors.
Programming language developed by A.V. Aho, P.J. Weinberger, and Brian W. Kernighan. The language is built on C syntax, includes the regular expression search facilities of grep, and adds in the advanced string and array handling features that are missing from the C language. nawk, gawk, and POSIX awk are versions of this language.
awk is a UNIX-based utility that scans input lines for a specific pattern. Perl has most, if not all, of the abilities of awk. See also Pattern.
the section called “Getting started with gawk
A pattern scanning and processing language for UNIX.
AWK is a general purpose programming language that is designed for processing text-based data, either in files or data streams. The name AWK is derived from the surnames of its authors — Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan; however, it is commonly pronounced "awk" and not as a string of separate letters. awk, when written in all lowercase letters, refers to the Unix or Plan 9 program that runs other programs written in the AWK programming language.