AWK is the best tool for breaking data into smaller chunks to make it suitable for input to other applications, or for manipulation. We can write complex scripts using AWK that can run into 100s or even 1,000s of lines, but for system administrators, most of the time, use of AWK is limited to relatively short scripts, and one-liners are best suited to the command line to give the desired output.
A one-liner is an AWK program consisting of a sequence of pattern-action statements in a single line. They are very useful in performing day-to-day file processing. They help in breaking down large files into chunks of information. These one-liners are often combined with a bash shell script for automation of sysadmin tasks.
