reordering and reformatting tab separated output:
[pdurbin@beamish ~]$ echo -e "foo\tbar\tbaz" | awk -F'\t' '{printf("%s %s (%s)\n",$2, $3, $1)}'
bar baz (foo)
# sum the third column
./foo | awk '{sum+=$3} END {print sum}'
#Print the last column
#(The variable NF is set to the total number of fields in the input record.)
./foo | awk '{print $NF}'
# use : as field separator
./foo | awk 'BEGIN {FS=":"}; {print $2,$1}'
[root@flanders ~]# grep selinuxfs /proc/mounts
none /selinux selinuxfs rw 0 0
[root@flanders ~]# awk '/ selinuxfs / { print $2 }' /proc/mounts
/selinux
[root@flanders ~]#
[root@beamish ~]# grep RHEL5 /etc/ghosts | awk '{print $5, $7}' | sort -u
RHEL5 i686
RHEL5 x86_64
[root@beamish ~]#
awk '{printf "%-30s %s\n", $1, $5 }'