The “l” at the beginning identifies /usr/bin/awk as a symbolic link. NOTE: Without the commas, the result would be “onetwothree”. Note that gawk allows you to ...
In an earlier article ("GNU Awk 4.0: Teaching an Old Bird Some New Tricks", published in the September 2011 issue of Linux Journal), I gave a brief history of awk and gawk and provided a high-level ...