sed & awk (2nd Edition)

Book Description

sed & awk describes two text processing programs that are mainstays of the UNIX programmer's toolbox. sed is a "stream editor" for editing streams of text that might be too large to edit as a single file, or that might be generated on the fly as part of a larger data processing step. The most common operation done with sed is substitution, replacing one block of text with another. awk is a complete programming language. Unlike many conventional languages, awk is "data driven" -- you specify what kind of data you are interested in and the operations to be performed when that data is found. awk does many things for you, including automatically opening and closing data files, reading records, breaking the records up into fields, and counting the records. While awk provides the features of most conventional programming languages, it also includes some unconventional features, such as extended regular expression matching and associative arrays. sed & awk describes both programs in detail and includes a chapter of example sed and awk scripts. This edition covers features of sed and awk that are mandated by the POSIX standard. This most notably affects awk, where POSIX standardized a new variable, CONVFMT, and new functions, toupper() and tolower(). The CONVFMT variable specifies the conversion format to use when converting numbers to strings (awk used to use OFMT for this purpose). The toupper() and tolower() functions each take a (presumably mixed case) string argument and return a new version of the string with all letters translated to the corresponding case. In addition, this edition covers GNU sed, newly available since the first edition. It also updates the first edition coverage of Bell Labs nawk and GNU awk (gawk), covers mawk, an additional freely available implementation of awk, and briefly discusses three commercial versions of awk, MKS awk, Thompson Automation awk (tawk), and Videosoft (VSAwk).

Customer Reviews:

Are you serious?.......2007-08-23

In a nutshell, if you don't have this book, you are probably not a serious programmer or system administrator.

Both sed and awk have been around for ages, and they are part of the fundamental toolkit of any Unix/Linux professional. Furthermore, there are versions available both for native Windows and for Linux-like environments under Windows (cygwin, MKS, mingw.)

If you are a Perl hacker, you probably use Perl for a lot of the tasks that would otherwise be performed with one of these tools. Nevertheless, they are worth your time.

The best (only?) book to learn these tools from A to Z.......2007-08-02

I had to do some text processing and I wanted to learn sed & awk so I picked this book that is, to my knowledge, the only book completely dedicated to these tools. The chapter on 'advanced' sed programming is very scary because when using 'advanced' sed features, the syntax is cryptic. It is nice to know that these features are there but I want to stay away from them and perhaps use awk or perl for the tasks that would require those 'advanced' features. Still, when you stick with the 'basic' and 'intermediate' sed features, you can do cool things easily in shell scripts.

Overall, the book was not thrilling to read but it does a good job to teach you these text processing tools.

I must be the only one who hates this book!.......2007-07-05

I have looked in this book again and again in an attempt to find out "how do I do xxx with awk or sed?" I just need a quick and dirty script to do something. The way the book is written prevents getting such answers. It is TERRIBLE as a resource for solutions to real problems. Presumably you can "learn sed and awk" from it, but what I want are answers, and this book gets in the way of that. It has literally never helped me solve a problem -- I always end up finding what I want with google somehow. Example: my latest experience was trying to write a script to simply go through a long shell script, and for each line, if it started with "if", "case" or "done", I wanted to prepend "echo line#" (echo the line number) to the line, so it would echo the line number when the script ran. If it had a certain other string in it, I wanted to replace that string with another, and if none, then just preserve the line. Should be pretty simple as a programmer, but I could not get the answer out of this book. It does not mention the FNS variable which allows you to echo the line number, for one thing. Sigh, I could go on... I'm in the minority, but I've made my point. I'm still looking for a good sed/awk reference.

Useful to learn it, not for experienced users, and not a reference book either........2007-07-01

I have a science background and am a regular user of unix systems, although I am not a professional IT'er. Therefore I was already familiar with sed and awk. I was looking for a single book that would give a good overview of all functions on a more-than-beginners-level and at the same time could serve as a reference. Perhaps not as 'the ultimate reference' but good enough for professionals who want to use sed and awk in a pragmatic way. With this I mean: a book you can turn to if you just want to write a little program/script that get's the job done.

This is not that book. I found this book useful in explaining the basics of sed and awk. There is also a quick reference section on both sed and awk. However, my overall observation is that the level of this book is not very advanced and therefore did not do the job for me. I would recommend this book to beginners and not to people who have already used sed and awk themselves. The level is basic, the reference sections are too brief and incomplete to be really 'reference sections'. I am still looking for a real reference book.

Tip: if you want to get started with sed and awk, search the internet for "sed one-liners" and "awk one-liners": these are one-line example 'programs' or commands that most likely will do what you are looking for. And if not, they are helpful to get you going and make some trivial changes so that the program does do what you need. No need for buying a book.

Definitive.......2007-03-30

I've been into Unix since the 80s... Minix on an Atari ST for the nostalgic... including being system admin on various Unix platforms at work (Solaris, HP-UX, DRS-NX, SCO Unix, BSD, etc.) and this has always been the definite work on both SED and AWK and has helped me out with various admin tasks over the years...

Highly recommended and essential for sysadmins

GMD

Average customer rating:

Excellent book to learn the basics
A good intro on Unix shell scripting and the problems it solves
Nice overview of Bourne/sh scripting
Okay
Practical and useful

Classic Shell Scripting
Arnold Robbins , and Nelson H.F. Beebe
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0596005954

Book Description

Shell scripting skills never go out of style. It's the shell that unlocks the real potential of Unix. Shell scripting is essential for Unix users and system administrators-a way to quickly harness and customize the full power of any Unix system. With shell scripts, you can combine the fundamental Unix text and file processing commands to crunch data and automate repetitive tasks. But beneath this simple promise lies a treacherous ocean of variations in Unix commands and standards. Classic Shell Scripting is written to help you reliably navigate these tricky waters. Writing shell scripts requires more than just a knowledge of the shell language, it also requires familiarity with the individual Unix programs: why each one is there, how to use them by themselves, and in combination with the other programs. The authors are intimately familiar with the tips and tricks that can be used to create excellent scripts, as well as the traps that can make your best effort a bad shell script. With Classic Shell Scripting you'll avoid hours of wasted effort. You'll learn not only write useful shell scripts, but how to do it properly and portably. The ability to program and customize the shell quickly, reliably, and portably to get the best out of any individual system is an important skill for anyone operating and maintaining Unix or Linux systems. Classic Shell Scripting gives you everything you need to master these essential skills.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent book to learn the basics.......2007-03-13

I've scrolled through lots of books, there is so much information out there, but this book has a tendency to keep it simple and to the point. It has good illustrative examples that not only are useful but also serve as a good practice guide.

A good intro on Unix shell scripting and the problems it solves.......2007-02-16

The purpose of this handy little book is to help someone who is working with Unix through the labyrinth of tools available and learn how and when to use them. It is important to note what is mentioned in the preface - "Throughout this book, we use the term Unix to mean not only commercial variants of the original Unix system, such as Solaris, Mac OS X, and HP-UX, but also the freely available workalike systems, such as GNU/Linux and the various BSD systems: BSD/OS, NetBSD, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD." I quote the book because the word "Unix" is about as descriptive as the word "car". The intended audience is anyone who is computer literate, already knows how to program, and is regularly faced with diverse problems in the workplace that must be solved with Unix tools. This book should give you a taste of which tool to turn to and when.

This book can be divided basically into two halves. The first half is a tutorial on writing Unix scripts. The book starts with a brief history of the Unix language and the philosophy behind Unix tools. Slowly, each chapter builds up your skill at script writing. You are shown how to differentiate between shells, how to work with text extensively, how to use loops, pipelines, variables, and decision statements, and how to work with files. There are detailed example scripts at every step along the way. By the end of chapter seven, you should know enough about basic shell scripting to be dangerous.

Starting in chapter 8, you are showed more application-related information. First, Chapter 8 shows and discusses some ready-made scripts for some tasks for which there is no out-of-the-box Unix solution. Some of the handy solutions shown are for path searching and automating software builds. Chapter 9 is a crash course on awk, and is aptly named. It is just enough to be dangerous. You learn how to solve common text processing problems with awk, but you'll need more resources to be really knowledgable. Chapter 10 explains the usage of common commands for listing files, modifying their timestamps, creating temporary files, finding files in a directory hierarchy, applying commands to a list of files, determining the amount of filesystem space used, and comparing files. Next there are two applied chapters showing you how to merge several databases and how to perform spellchecking by using scripting. Chapter 13 changes the subject a bit and talks about the concept of processes in Unix and how you can use their statistics to accomplish a number of monitoring and control tasks. Chapter 14 talks about problems you may run into if you try to take advantage of shell-language extensions, while Chapter 15 addresses the issue of writing secure scripts to the extent it is possible to do so. Writing man pages, and the basics of the Unix filesystem are the subjects of the last two chapters of the book.

I would say it is a good modern introduction to the subject of shell scripting and Unix tools and how to use them. It doesn't dive deeply into any particular topic, but it will get you started by broadly introducing you to the problems most Unix script writers and system admins face regularly and how to get started solving those problems. I highly recommend it for that purpose.

Nice overview of Bourne/sh scripting.......2006-11-17

This book provides a nice overview of the Bourne/sh shell's commands. I wish there were more examples with complete scripts. Korn shell users might want to consider "Korn Shell: Programs for Your Survival at Work" by Larry L. Smith. Bash users might want to consider "Bash Shell: Essential Programs for Your Survival at Work" by Larry L. Smith. Some of the examples in Randal K. Michael's "Mastering UNIX Shell Scripting" are also helpful.

Okay.......2006-03-12

I would say this is a pretty good book that covers it's subject very well, buti didn't use it much because i had also bought Unix in a Nutshell, Fourth Edition, which covered the basics and differences between the shells briefly, which was all i needed at the time. but i looked through this and read some stuff that helped and it is a good book if you plan on doing extended shell scripting. it was just a little more than i actually needed

Practical and useful .......2005-09-20

Great book. The emphasis is nicely split between actually using the shell itself and the whole supporting cast of unix tools (sed, awk, cut, join, sort etc.) The idea of carefully crafting solutions using the unix toolbox mindset is key. I also like the fact he doesn't try to teach to multiple shells, but first tries to emphasize portability by sticking mainly to a POSIX standard, and only later adds info about non standard shell topics. If I could only have one book on shell scripting, this would be it. The best description is 'Practical'.

sed and awk Pocket Reference, 2nd Edition

Average customer rating:

Serves the purpose.
a must have
Key text searching programs
A super fast lightweight reference
All you need to use sed or awk well.

sed and awk Pocket Reference, 2nd Edition
Arnold Robbins
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0596003528

Book Description

For people who create and modify text files, sed and awk are power tools for editing. sed, awk, and regular expressions allow programmers and system administrators to automate editing tasks that need to be performed on one or more files, to simplify the task of performing the same edits on multiple files, and to write conversion programs. The sed & awk Pocket Reference is a companion volume to sed & awk, Second Edition, Unix in a Nutshell, Third Edition, and Effective awk Programming, Third Edition. This new edition has expanded coverage of gawk (GNU awk), and includes sections on:

An overview of sed and awk?s command line syntax
Alphabetical summaries of commands, including nawk and gawk
Profiling with pgawk
Coprocesses and sockets with gawk
Internationalization with gawk
A listing of resources for sed and awk users

This small book is a handy reference guide to the information presented in the larger volumes. It presents a concise summary of regular expressions and pattern matching, and summaries of sed and awk. Arnold Robbins, an Atlanta native now happily living in Israel, is a professional programmer and technical author and coauthor of various O'Reilly Unix titles. He has been working with Unix systems since 1980, and currently maintains gawk and its documentation.

Customer Reviews:

Serves the purpose........2007-08-04

Handy for those who don't use sed and awk every day. I keep it in my cube.

a must have.......2004-03-19

This little book is great. I've only had it for about a week. I needed to match some text today with a pattern that was a little bit more involved than my usual simple needs. I flipped through a few pages and found some examples that quickly helped me derive the search pattern I needed in a few minutes.

I have the full "sed & awk" second edition book, but I went to the pocket reference instead. I would not have been able to find what I needed in the larger book as quickly.

Some have complained about some of the pocket references lacking indexes. This one doesn't have one, but it's so easy to use that it doesn't need one. Just flip and few pages and you'll find what you need. As far as I'm concerned time is money. This little book has paid for itself in one weeks use.

Key text searching programs.......2004-03-07

Sed and awk are the mainstay for those of you who write shell scripts on unix/linux machines that manipulate text files. It is difficult to overstate the usefulness of these two programs.

So O'Reilly and Robbins decided to help you by providing this pocketbook reference that encapsulates the online help for the programs. The book is aimed at someone who programs, but still prefers a traditional hardcopy reference as an aid to human memory. It assumes that you basically already know how to use the programs, but just need some reminder as to the exact syntax and all the possible options.

A super fast lightweight reference.......2000-12-20

I use this pocket reference more then any other reference for sed and awk. This is mostly a syntax guide for folks who already know sed and awk. If you don't know sed and awk, get the Ellen Quigleys 'Unix Shells'(for beginners) followed by O'Reillies 'Sed and Awk' reference. (Big book.) I tend to forget exactly how to do something, so I will just quickly look at my bookmarked pocket reference, and flip quickly to an example of syntax to get that bash code going correctly. If your desk has as many papers and books on it as mine, this is nice for freeing up some elbow room, while keeping the big books on the bookshelf most of the time.

All you need to use sed or awk well........2000-09-13

I bought this "book" because I am writing a program that deals extensively with strings and text (natural language parsing). I was having some difficulty mastering sed, and understanding how it works. For example, "s/[^A-Za-z]//" was not working (to remove non alpha chars). After five pages in this little gem, I knew what I needed. A trailing "g".

The book is rich with examples, explanations, and really just cuts straight to the chase.

This is not a book for the casual user. It is, after all, a reference, not a tutorial. Unix users (and administrators) who already have a basic grasp of regular expressions and just what sed and awk are (and grep/egrep too) will find this most rewarding.

Book Description

If you've heard the phrase, "You can't take it with you," you may have thought, sadly, that it referred to your trusted shelf of O'Reilly Unix books. Thorough, reliable, and all encompassing, these books are unfortunately not especially portable en masse--unless, of course, you have a copy of the Unix CD Bookshelf. The Unix CD Bookshelf keeps all the books you've come to rely on right at your fingertips, wherever you may go. Version 3 provides convenient online access to seven indispensable books:

Unix Power Tools, 3rd Edition
Learning the Unix Operating System, 5th Edition
Learning the vi Editor, 6th Edition
Mac OS X for Unix Geeks
Learning the Korn Shell, 2nd Edition
sed & awk, 2nd Edition
Unix in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

--all from your CD-ROM drive. The CD has a master index for all seven books and a powerful search engine--and all the text is extensively hyper-linked--so you can find what you're looking for quickly. Packaged with the hard copy of Unix in a Nutshell, Third Edition, it takes up less than two inches of bookshelf space, and when you're on the run, you can just grab the CD and go. The seven books included on the CD --well over 3,000 pages of useful O'Reilly reference and tutorials-- if purchased separately, would cost more than $330 (US), but the Unix CD Bookshelf, Version 3 retails for only $129.95. The Unix CD Bookshelf packs a stack of essential Unix books into one comprehensive, immensely convenient, and portable small package. Next time they say that you can't take it with you, you'll know better.

UNIX AWK and SED Programmer's Interactive Workbook (UNIX Interactive Workbook)

Average customer rating:

Not a book for a learner
Difficult to understand
Peter knows how to teach !
Hard to Understand
The Best AWK and UNIX training manual!

UNIX AWK and SED Programmer's Interactive Workbook (UNIX Interactive Workbook)
Peter Patsis
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall PTR
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0130826758

Customer Reviews:

Not a book for a learner.......2003-03-08

It was really hard to understand as a beginner like other reviewers. It makes you keep wonder why you don't follow and don't get much explanation. Well, the first chapter was okay as the introduction of regular expressions, but you get lost by the time you try to understand the excersises in chapter 2. Have you ever had the feeling that you feel like you want to go back again and again but you still goes far and far from the point? It is frustrationg. However, this kind of book could be useful for the teachers, definitely not for learners.

Difficult to understand.......2003-02-27

I was very disappointed in this book. The descriptions and samples are very tough to follow, needing re-reading many times to follow. The Web site link does not work, so answers to the "test your thinking" sections cannot be found, nor the sample files. I suggest looking elsewhere and not get this book. It is just too painful to wade through, and is fond of making simple subjects much to obtuse.

Peter knows how to teach !.......2002-03-29

I am an Oracle DBA. So far sed is enough for my file processing chores.Since I may need AWK later on, I am very interested in learing AWK now.
Thanks a great deal, Peter ! I bought the book yesterday. It cut
down my fear about AWK. The way Peter shows AWK makes it easy to understand ! Many people are great programmers but to write a book, you MUST be a be a great TEACHER besides a great expert in this field. Pater is the right one.
I had this in my mind on my way home:AWK is not hard , all you need is to have Peter as the teacher !

Peter: What is your teaching background if you don't mind ?

Prentice Hall: I love your 'interactive workbook', I bought almost half of all your titiles !
Thank you for choosing excellent teachers to write those books ! This is an absolutelly successsful project! I hope to see more books like this !

Hard to Understand.......2000-12-20

The idea of a workbook format was good, but the concepts weren't explained well. I read sections over many times only to think, why didn't it just say that? It was a frustrating book to read. You could probably get the information faster and more painlessly from another book.

The Best AWK and UNIX training manual!.......2000-06-12

As a computer consultant, I sometimes need to train 'folks' that haven't had too much time in front of a computer. For those souls that have grown used to Windows, UNIX has the potential to strike fear in a way that I've seldom seen duplicated. This text offers the BEST environment for teaching UNIX and AWK that I have seen.

There are UNIX and AWK reference books galore, but none of them take a systematic approach to TEACHING the subject, (no, not even teach yourself, or the Dummies versions). This book reviews each command and ends with a generous question section. (Not just one or two questions at a high level, and not just one really complicated question - the questions build very nicely to the hardest issues.)

If you are looking for a reference book, this will do, though there are others that I would prefer, but if you are learning UNIX and AWK on your own, or looking to teach it to someone else, this book gets my highest recommendation. I have given it now to everyone I have trained and all have had great success with it. I would feel entirely comfortable handing this book to a trainee, and with no further instruction allowing them to code when they've finished. " An absolute gift"

Average customer rating:
UNIX SHELLS BY EXAMPLE The Complete Guide to the C, Bourne, and Korn Shells Pus Awk, Sed and Grep
Ellie Quigley
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Unix | Operating Systems | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: B000OHUIME

Average customer rating:
Sed & Awk
Herold
Manufacturer: Addison Wesley Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0201559846

Average customer rating:
Unix Awk and Sed Programmerandapos;s Interactive Workbook
Peter Patsis
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall PTR
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Unix | APIs & Operating Environments | Programming | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B000OHYE9M

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