Sum a Column With awk

Aggregate numbers in a column without a spreadsheet.

LinuxtextstatsscriptingcliLow risk

Run awk '{s+=$1} END {print s}' file to add up the first column.

01Command

Command

$ awk '{s+=$1} END {print s}' numbers.txt

02What it does

awk splits each line into fields and accumulates a running total in END, so summing, averaging or counting a column of a text file is a one-liner that scales to millions of rows. It is scriptable in a way that a GUI spreadsheet is not.

03Risk

RiskLow risk

RequirementsPreinstalled on Linux (GNU awk)

!Warning: awk treats non-numeric fields as zero; clean the input or validate columns first if data is mixed.

04Undo

✓No undo needed — this command does not change persistent state.

05Sources

gawk.1.en.html manual page (Debian bookworm)
Debian · technical · 2026-09-20
Evidence: Documents awk fields, arithmetic and END blocks for column aggregation.

Last verified: 2026-10-13 · Category: Developer

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