COP 2344 (Shell Scripting) Project #5
Using awk

AWK (for Aho, Weinberger, and Kernighan) is a versatile data filter that is often used to re-format data, and to produce reports and summaries.  It is one of the most powerful of the standard filter commands.  For this project you will write an AWK script to print the population per square mile for each country in Europe, and when done print the total population of Europe.

The source data comes from the file $HOME/countrys.dat, whose format is:

Country_Name    Area     Population    Continent

The Area is shown in thousands of square miles, and the Population is shown in millions of people.  (So you will need to do some conversions.)  The four fields are separated with one tab between fields.

This file may be copied from ~wpollock/countrys.dat, or you can download countrys.dat.

When run, the script's output should looks similar to this:

  Country           People per
 in Europe         Square Mile
 ---------        -------------

  Austria             250.00
  France              265.06
  Germany             586.96
  United Kingdom      680.85

Total population of Europe: 219 million

• The data is derived from www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/, compiled in 3/2015.
• You should create a subdirectory ~/bin to hold your shell scripts.  (This directory should already be on your PATH.)
• Make sure your scripts and data files have sensible permissions.  (Be sure group members can access your files and directories as well; the only group member is your instructor and this access is needed in order to grade your work.)
• Make sure your scripts will run correctly no matter what the current working directory is.
• Your scripts will be graded based on correctness and elegance (readability and proper use of features, commands, and comments).  See the syllabus for more details about projects and grading.
• For information on AWK see The Gnu AWK User Guide.  The reference (man) page for the POSIX (really the Single Unix Specification or “SUS”) shows only standard AWK features.  View the awk standard reference, available from The Open Group.

A copy of your script as email.  You can use the script command to record your work and the results of running your scripts.  Feel free to “clean-up” the transcript file before you submit it.  (Remove the results of running vi (but not the vi command line), and any typos.)

You can type or send as email to .  Please use the subject similar to “Shell Scripting Project (awk) Submission”, so I can tell which emails are submitted projects.

Send questions about the assignment to .  Please use a subject similar to “Shell Scripting Project (awk) Question” so I can tell which emails are questions about the assignment (and not submissions).

Please see your syllabus for more information about submitting projects.