1. a pattern scanning and text processing language Mawk is an interpreter for the AWK Programming Language. The AWK language is useful for manipulation of data files, text retrieval and processing, and for prototyping and experimenting with algorithms. Mawk is a new awk meaning it implements the AWK language as defined in Aho, Kernighan and Weinberger, The AWK Programming Language, Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1988. (Hereafter referred to as the AWK book.) Mawk conforms to the Posix 1003.2 (draft 11.3) definition of the AWK language which contains a few features not described in the AWK book, and mawk provides a small number of extensions. Mawk is smaller and much faster than gawk. It has some compile-time limits such as NF = 32767 and sprintf buffer = 1020. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

2. pattern scanning and text processing language From whatis