What does the semicolon mean in awk action?

Question

I am trying to decipher the action in the following awk expression, in particular about what it means ; after the first user-defined variable is specified.

 { num_gold++; wt_gold += $2 } 

Answer 1

In awk you can write two statements on the same line, separated by a character ; (semi-colon)

 { num_gold++; wt_gold += $2 } 

Otherwise, you should put them on separate lines:

 { num_gold++ wt_gold += $2 } 

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To print variables, simply add print before the variables:

 { num_gold++ wt_gold += $2 print num_gold print wt_gold } 

As I said, you can put them all on one line:

 { num_gold++; wt_gold += $2; print num_gold; print wt_gold; } 

Too long!

print also takes several arguments, so try print num_gold, wt_gold .