UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Dear vgersh99 and glen,

Thanks for your replies. Glen, I got clarifed what you explained. But about associative nature of awk arrays i'm still confused, not able to understand yet how array element can be accessed based on a string, I got one example at gawk manual to illustrate associative nature of awk arrays, it goes here:

Code:

awk '
# Print list of word frequencies
{
    for (i = 1; i <= NF; i++)
        freq[$i]++
}

END {
    for (word in freq)
        printf "%s\t%d\n", word, freq[word]
}' test.txt

If this is the input file:

Code:

Kuwait  UAE     Qatar   KSA     Jordan
Lebanon Egypt   Syria   Kuwait  Qatar

Here is the output:

Code:

Syria   1
KSA     1
Lebanon 1
UAE     1
Qatar   2
Egypt   1
Jordan  1
Kuwait  2

Can you pls explain the contents of freq at each iteration of first rule and also what happens at each iteration of END rule? It would be a great favor.

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,
An AWK student