AWK. Calculate mean, min and max

Oct 23, 2008 by damiles    11 Comments    Posted under: Linux/Unix, Tutorials

AWK is a general purpose programing language that is designed for processing text-based data. This unix command is very powerful and with it we can calculate the mean, min and max of a data stored in file.

data.txt:

10
20
50
100
200
500

awk command:

awk ‘{if(min==”"){min=max=$1}; if($1>max) {max=$1}; if($1< min) {min=$1}; total+=$1; count+=1} END {print total/count, min, max}’ data.txt

Result:

146.667 10 500

Tags: awk, command, unix

11 Comments + Add Comment

• 
  piponazo October 19, 2009 at 4:22 pm

  Very useful
• 
  piponazo January 18, 2010 at 1:07 am

  A small gift for you. This awk program is an extension of yours that accept different column numbers and also print the line index where min and max values occur.

  #get-mean-min-max.awk
  #You must define COL with option -v of awk
  {
  if(min==”")
  {
  min=max=$COL
  };

  if($COL>max)
  {
  max=$COL
  maxIdx=NR
  };

  if($COL< min)
  {
  min=$COL
  minIdx=NR
  };

  total+=$COL;
  count+=1
  }

  END {print total/count "\n" min " – " minIdx "\n" max " – " maxIdx}
• 
  thusi April 8, 2010 at 3:46 pm

  awk ‘{if(min==””)min=max=$1}; if($1>max) {max=$1}; if($1< min) {min=$1}; total+=$1; count+=1} END {print total/count, min, max}’ data.txt
• 
  Mike May 26, 2010 at 5:54 pm

  I had been looking for this function for ages, and this is it (and even more than I was looking for)!! thanks
• Average, Maximum, Minumum from a data file using AWK « Mysterious Universe June 7, 2010 at 7:22 pm

  [...] Solution I made with the help of these guides 1 and 2 is given below. Save the lines between the ###### as a file, say meanminmax. [...]
• Average, Maximum, Minimum from a data file using AWK « Mysterious Universe June 7, 2010 at 7:24 pm

  [...] Solution I made with the help of these guides 1 and 2 is given below. Save the lines between the ###### as a file, say meanminmax. [...]
• 
  Freddy Atienza December 1, 2010 at 11:15 am

  Amazing blog:) I am going to want a bit of time to toy with this article!
• 
  Bud Maddock June 27, 2011 at 3:03 pm

  The single quotes around the script cause a “bash: syntax error near unexpected token ‘(‘ ” to occur when dragging and dropping the script on some computers. This is easily fixed by deleting and replacing them with single quotes from your keyboard. The first double quote causes another error, “invalid character …” to appear just before the END block. Fix it the same way, replace the first ” with one from your keyboard.

  Total/Count is the Average but not the statistical mean.
• Using bash, how can i find out the average, max and min from a list of numbers? - Admins Goodies August 12, 2011 at 8:22 am

  [...] Since you’re already using awk [...]
• 
  Radi February 17, 2012 at 10:46 pm

  OMG .. i don’t have other words
• 
  MartinG February 6, 2013 at 10:43 am

  Nice, clean , simple , see below:

  awk -F ‘;’ ‘{if(min==””){min=max=$2}; if($2>max) {max=$2}; if($2< min) {min=$2}; total+=$2; count+=1} END {print total/count, min, max}’ data.txt