Text Manipulation Tools

2.1. `awk`

Awk is a versatile programming language designed for pattern scanning and processing. It is particularly useful for extracting and manipulating text from files.

Example:

awk '{print $1}' file.txt

This command prints the first column of each line in file.txt.

2.2. `sed`

Sed is a stream editor that can perform basic text transformations on an input stream (a file or input from a pipeline).

Example:

sed 's/old-text/new-text/g' file.txt

This command replaces all occurrences of old-text with new-text in file.txt.

2.3. `grep`

Grep is a command-line utility for searching plain-text data for lines that match a regular expression.

Example:

grep 'pattern' file.txt

This command searches for pattern in file.txt.

3.1. Combining Tools

Combining tools can enhance efficiency. For instance, using grep to filter data and awk to process it further.

Example:

grep 'pattern' file.txt | awk '{print $2}'

This command first filters lines containing pattern and then prints the second column of the filtered output.

3.2. Using Regular Expressions

Regular expressions can be used with tools like sed and grep for complex text manipulation.

Example:

grep -E '^start.*end$' file.txt

This command finds lines that start with start and end with end.