BEGIN
and END
Special Patterns ¶All the patterns described so far are for matching input records.
The BEGIN
and END
special patterns are different.
They supply startup and cleanup actions for awk
programs.
BEGIN
and END
rules must have actions; there is no default
action for these rules because there is no current record when they run.
BEGIN
and END
rules are often referred to as
“BEGIN
and END
blocks” by longtime awk
programmers.