But beyond that, an expression can assign a new value to a variable or a field , with an assignment operator. An expression can serve as a statement on its own. Most other kinds of statements contain one or more expressions which specify data to be operated on. As in other languages, expressions in awk include variables, array references, constants, and function calls, as well as combinations of these with various operators. String, numeric, and regexp constants.
Variables give names to values for later use.
Incrementing the numeric value of a variable. The conversion of strings to numbers and vice versa. The whole truth about numbers and strings. Go to the previous , next section.