How to get awk version on macOS?

user_6813490 0
Viewed 2425

I know how to get the version for awk on Linux: awk -W version

This doesn't work, however, on macOS.

I looked around on SO and couldn't find anything.

I also looked in the awk man page and couldn't find anything:

$ man awk | grep version
          conversion format used when converting numbers (default %.6g)
   There are no explicit conversions  between  numbers  and  strings.   To
macos awk
2 Answers
awk --version
awk version 20070501
user_7848840

The EASY way when -v, -V, -version or --version are available (this option is available in most of cases):

awk --version
awk version 20070501

or 

awk -version
awk version 20070501

Now when it is not available, we go the hard way:

whereis awk
/usr/bin/awk

then 

what /usr/bin/awk 
/usr/bin/awk
    PROGRAM:awk  PROJECT:awk-24

and 

strings /usr/bin/awk | grep -Ei "version|awk" 
/BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/awk/awk-24/src/b.c
version 20070501
bin/awk
-version
--version
awk %s
awkdelete
weird printf conversion %s
can't happen: bad conversion %c in format()
out of memory in awksprintf
out of memory in awkprintf
@(#)PROGRAM:awk  PROJECT:awk-24

You find most all the information you were looking for by reading the strings in the binary and by using grep to isolate what you are really looking for. (Side note you have also find out that -version and --version are arguments that can be used)

You can also use grep -Eai "\bversion\b|awk|unix" /usr/bin/awk to reach the same result (little less readable)

user_87942210
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