macOS
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brew install mawkprovider-native install command
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Install mawk with Homebrew
Interpreter for the AWK Programming Language. Version 1.3.4-20260302 via Homebrew; verified from local package data.
install
Additional install commands
overview
Package summary
Interpreter for the AWK Programming Language
Project links
Commands and aliases
- mawk
history
Project history and usage
mawk is a compact AWK interpreter used for fast pattern scanning, text processing, and shell scripting.
Project history
The current official mawk page says Mike Brennan wrote mawk, that it had no maintainer for a time, and that Thomas E. Dickey adopted it in 2009 by starting with Debian package fixes and unresolved reports. The official changelog preserves the older 1.3 series history and shows the long maintenance gap being bridged by Debian patches and later upstream work.
The manpage frames mawk as a 'new awk' implementation of the AWK language defined by Aho, Kernighan, and Weinberger, with POSIX draft compatibility and a small set of implementation extensions.
Adoption history
mawk's adoption has been strongest in Unix-like packaging culture. The official page lists package links for AIX, Arch, DragonFly BSD, Fedora, Fink, FreeBSD, Gentoo, Haiku, Homebrew, HPUX, MacPorts, Mageia, and others, and the input confirms distribution through common Linux and macOS package managers.
How it is used
Users invoke `mawk` like other AWK implementations: short programs can be passed on the command line, longer programs via `-f`, and input comes from files or standard input. Its `-W` options expose mawk-specific behavior such as dump, interactive mode, POSIX mode, traditional mode, and version output.
Why package nerds care
mawk matters because AWK is one of the classic packaging and build-script workhorses. It gives packagers a small, fast AWK implementation whose behavior must be tracked carefully against POSIX awk, BWK awk, and GNU awk.
Timeline
- 1996: mawk 1.3 and 1.3.2 releases appear in the official changelog.
- 2008: Debian patches are incorporated into the later upstream maintenance history.
- 2009: Thomas E. Dickey adopts mawk maintenance.
- 2010: 1.3.4 maintenance snapshots begin after the original 1.3.3 plus Debian patches baseline.
- 2026: Official changelog still records active maintenance.
Related projects
- awk, BWK awk, GNU awk, POSIX awk, Debian mawk package
Sources
security posture
Risk level: yellow
generalized runtime or code generation signal.
Risk classifier
yellow risk · medium confidence · runtime
Why
- generalized runtime or code generation signal
Signals
- text:interpreter,programming language
Install behavior
- No Homebrew bottle metadata was recorded.
Recommended review
Before unattended agent use, check whether the tool reads plaintext credentials, writes remote state, publishes artifacts, or shells out to plugins.
executables
Installed executables
| Command | Kind | Exposure | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
mawk | executable | indexed executable | Discovered from the local executable index. |
freshness
Version and freshness
These signals separate page generation age, package-manager activity, and upstream release comparison. Version lag is warned only when an evidence URL and comparable versions are present.
page generated2026-08-03
manager version1.3.4-20260302
manager updated
local dataunknown
upstreamnot available
latest detectednot detected
- okNo freshness warnings were generated.
install metadata
Package metadata
| Package key | brew:mawk |
|---|---|
| Version | 1.3.4-20260302 |
| Package manager | Homebrew |
| Homepage | https://invisible-island.net/mawk/ |
| Bottle | not recorded |
| Service | none declared |
source trail
Generated from repository data
This page is generated by av-web from the private package SQLite artifact built by scripts/generate-pkg-sqlite.py.
Combined YAML source
View the package source record on GitHub.
Used sources
- Geiger risk classifier
- Nucleus package database
- curated package history
- pkgdb category and tag curation