AWK Source Code Blocks in Org Mode

AWK is a task-specific language optimized for regular expression record data manipulation. It is a little language that is Turing complete, efficient to execute, reasonably simple to express, powerful within its scope, and pathologically cryptic.

A natural Org mode representation of the record data AWK was designed to manipulate is the table.

There are many well-maintained AWK compatible languages. The variable org-babel-awk-command holds the name of AWK executable. The default is "awk".

To configure AWK source code blocks in Org mode, add the appropriate dotted pair to org-babel-load-languages

(org-babel-do-load-languages
 'org-babel-load-languages
 '((awk . t)))

Two examples from GNU Awk User's Guide show simple uses of AWK.

Given the table bbs-list

this AWK source code block

#+begin_src awk :stdin bbs-list
/foo/ { print $0 }
#+end_src

returns a subset of the original table

Given the table inventory-shipped

this bit of AWK code

#+begin_src awk :stdin inventory-shipped :exports results
$1 ~ /J/
#+end_src

returns this subset of the table