Description: Awk has been around since the dawn of time. It is an amazingly powerful tool with it's own programming language. Awk is so cool that it can be used to create entire services (that process text). But, there's a lot of ignorance out there regarging awk, and ignorance breeds fear. Come take the Awk red pill.

Abstract: We'll start out by reviewing the history of awk. We'll then go over some examples of cool things you can do to whet our appetites. Then we'll go over the syntax and rules of the awk language. Then we'll see real examples of awk in action by doing some amazing text processing using only awk. Throughout the process, there will be lots of examples that attendees can run to test what they see themselves. Some sample text files will be on github so users can quickly and easily reproduce their results locally as we go.

Goal: By the end of the presentation, people will be ready to start using awk to solve real world problems. They will be comfortable reading and understanding awk programs.

Audience: Anyone with basic programming or command line experience.