AWK is a data-processing and scripting language created by Aho, Weinberger, and Kernighan at Bell Labs in 1977. It is available on most UNIX systems since Version 7 and is still found on the majority of UNIX and UNIX-like systems today.

As a scripting language, AWK is suitable for writing both one-liners and programs of a few hundred lines.

AWK is available on systems including the PDP 11/70.

      BEGIN {
              print "hello, world"
              end
      }

Aho, A. V., Kernighan, B. W., Weinberger, P. J. (1988). The AWK programming language. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.