GAWK: The GNU AWK User's Guide [Paperback]

Arnold D. Robbins (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 324 pages
• Publisher: Free Software Foundation (January 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1882114272
• ISBN-13: 978-1882114276
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,930,689 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good reference to a expert awk user who wants to try Gawk, September 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: GAWK: The GNU AWK User's Guide (Paperback)

I bought this book for my computer science course. The author says the quality of the book is bad because he worked hard to maintain the price low. But, personally, I would buy something more visually appealing even if I have to pay 10$ more. Moreover, the author assumes that people know everything about Unix and Gawk, thus for a person like me, it was kinda hard to keep up with the book. However, once you are familiar with the Gawk, this book is kinda good as a reference. If you know Unix and maybe Perl, It can be a good choice. But if you are a JAVAer or C++er and know nothing about Unix.. stick with online tutorial...

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars excellent reference/tutorial for standard Unix utility, April 29, 2003

By 

karl berry (keizer, or United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: GAWK: The GNU AWK User's Guide (Paperback)

Awk has been one of the basic building blocks in Unix for over 25 years now. GNU awk has a number of useful extensions, including network programming and sorting.

This is the standard manual for GNU awk. It includes both tutorial sections for those new to awk, and reference material.

It has had numerous revisions since the 1999 version which the first person here reviewed. I do agree with him that if you are completely new to Unix, it is not the place to start.

gawk is free software, and this book is free documentation.

5.0 out of 5 stars Still a great reference for (g)awk, November 29, 2007

By 

Utah Blaine (Somewhere on Trexalon in District 268) - See all my reviews

This review is from: GAWK: The GNU AWK User's Guide (Paperback)

This book is now out of print as I'm writing this review, but I still think that it is a great reference for (g)awk. I'm writing this review because I feel that if you are a relatively experienced UNIX user (not necessarily a sys admin) and want to learn about (g)awk, I highly recommend this book if you can still get your hands on it. It has been my companion for about 8 years now and is the only reference I use for (g)awk. I agree entirely with both of the previous reviews. If you have no experience with UNIX, this book will be way beyond you, don't waste your time. I would say that if you are comfortable with writing simple scripts in Bourne shell, you'll have no problem understanding this book even if you don't know anything about awk. If you don't know what the Bourne shell is, you need to learn more UNIX before diving into this reference book. All the basics of awk are here: inputs, outputs, regular expressions, arrays, special awk functions, etc. If you want to learn about the latest/greatest updates to gawk, you'll have to look elsewhere (either online or in other books), but for the regular UNIX user, this is the only (g)awk reference you're likely to need. Well written, well organized. Highly recommended.