awk ' { if ( length > x ) { x = length } }END{ print x }' file.txt

awk can be used for complex calculations, for example:

awk 'BEGIN {printf "%.3f\n", sin(30 * atan2(0, -1)/180)}'

will calculate and return:

0.500

Since awk does not have a constant for , we use atan2(0, -1) instead.

Suppose you have a file input containing data separated by delimiters such as:

variable = value

or:

variable = value

The following command can be used to obtain value:

awk -F"[ \t]*[=][ \t]*" '{ print $2 }' input

To remove all duplicates from file.txt without sorting, issue:

awk '!x[$0]++' file.txt

Given a file with the contents:

Q: What is this?
A: This is a FAQ!

and you would like to achieve:

Q: What is this? A: This is a FAQ!

then the following awk one liner:

awk 'NR%2{printf "%s ",$0;next;}1' yourFile

will merge all the lines in a file by two.

Given an input such as:

a1 : "abc
c2  : def
e3 : "ghi "
f5 :" a     b"

The following awk script:

awk -F: '
    function trim(s) { 
        return gensub(/^[ \t"]*|[ \t"]*$/, "", "g", s) 
    }
    BEGIN {
        printf "{"
    } 
    NR > 1 { 
        printf(", ") 
    } 
    { 
        printf("\"%s\":\"%s\"", trim($1), trim(substr($0, index($0,":") + 1)));
    }
    END {
        print "}"
    }
'

will return the JSON object:

{"a1":"abc","c2":"def","e3":"ghi","f5":"a     b"}

where keys and values are trimmed for spaces and quotes from the start and end.

One example application would be creating a JSON object out of the status of an APC UPS:

apcaccess | awk -F: '
    function trim(s) { 
        return gensub(/^[ \t"]*|[ \t"]*$/, "", "g", s) 
    }
    BEGIN {
        printf "{"
    } 
    NR > 1 { 
        printf(", ") 
    } 
    { 
        printf("\"%s\":\"%s\"", trim($1), trim(substr($0, index($0,":") + 1)));
    }
    END {
        print "}"
    }
'

From qistoph.

# Based on gist https://gist.github.com/staaldraad/4c4c80800ce15b6bef1c1186eaa8da9f
# - added TCP states
 
awk 'BEGIN{states["01"]="TCP_ESTABLISHED"
states["02"]="TCP_SYN_SENT"
states["03"]="TCP_SYN_RECV"
states["04"]="TCP_FIN_WAIT1"
states["05"]="TCP_FIN_WAIT2"
states["06"]="TCP_TIME_WAIT"
states["07"]="TCP_CLOSE"
states["08"]="TCP_CLOSE_WAIT"
states["09"]="TCP_LAST_ACK"
states["0A"]="TCP_LISTEN"
states["0B"]="TCP_CLOSING"
states["0C"]="TCP_NEW_SYN_RECV"
}
function hextodec(str,ret,n,i,k,c){
    ret = 0
    n = length(str)
    for (i = 1; i <= n; i++) {
        c = tolower(substr(str, i, 1))
        k = index("123456789abcdef", c)
        ret = ret * 16 + k
    }
    return ret
}
function getIP(str,ret){
    ret=hextodec(substr(str,index(str,":")-2,2));
    for (i=5; i>0; i-=2) {
        ret = ret"."hextodec(substr(str,i,2))
    }
    ret = ret":"hextodec(substr(str,index(str,":")+1,4))
    return ret
}
NR > 1 {{if(NR==2)print "Local - Remote";local=getIP($2);remote=getIP($3)}{print local" - "remote" "states[$4]}}' /proc/net/tcp

From the very question on how to compute the standard deviation:

awk '{ x += $0; y += $0 ^ 2 } END { print sqrt( y/NR - (x/NR) ^ 2) }'