The following prints all lines in the file specified. You can also replace $0 with nothing.

awk '{ print $0 }'

The following will only print the first column in the file. The -F is the field seperator and is specified with: -F“:”

awk -F":" '{ print $1 }' /etc/passwd

You can also select multiple columns and separate them with a space for a better format

awk -F":" '{ print $1 " " $2 }' /etc/passwd

Grab every instance where column is greater than 4

sar -q | awk '$4 >= 4'

Awk for multiple words

awk '/Luke|Joe/' test

Awk for multiple words case insensitive:

awk '/Luke|Joe/i' test

awk inversely

awk '!/Luke/' test

| awk '$5 ~ /[0-9]w/'

| awk '$5 ~ /[0-9]w/ && $6 ~ /REG/'