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Invoking @command{awk}

There are two ways to run @command{awk}---with an explicit program or with one or more program files. Here are templates for both of them; items enclosed in [...] in these templates are optional:

awk [options] -f progfile [--] file ...
awk [options] [--] 'program' file ...

Besides traditional one-letter POSIX-style options, @command{gawk} also supports GNU long options.

It is possible to invoke @command{awk} with an empty program:

awk " datafile1 datafile2

Doing so makes little sense though; @command{awk} exits silently when given an empty program. (d.c.) If @option{--lint} has been specified on the command-line, @command{gawk} issues a warning that the program is empty.


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