awk – if condition examples

Awk is pretty powerful command line utility to filter lines from a stream. Here are some awk if condition examples.

Data used in these examples:

1 string1
2 string2
100 string3

Awk if example – print full line based on a field value

Print entries (full line) where first column is greater than certain threshold. Here $0 represents full line.

cat data1.txt | awk '{if ($1 > 1) print $0}'

2 string2
100 string3

Awk if example – print specific field based on a field value

Print entries (2nd field only) where first column is greater than certain threshold.

cat data1.txt | awk '{if ($1 > 1) print $2}'

string2
string3

Awk if example – conditional sum

Find sum of first column values where column value is less that certain threshold. This can be used to exclude outliers.

cat data1.txt | awk '{if ($1 <= 10) S+=$1} END {print S}'

3

Awk if example – multiple statements in if

Find avg of first column values where column value is less that certain threshold.

cat data1.txt | awk '{if ($1 <= 10) {S+=$1;C+=1}} END {print S/C}'

1.5