"The basic premise here is that you, I and the next guy have all seen the solution to many a question like: "Given a file filled with rows of space delimited numbers, how do I add up all the values for field 2 ($2) in awk so that I can get the total when awk is through processing my file?" ...or something to that effect. Knowing the fundamentals of performing arithmetic in awk can be a great asset to you at work (or, at play, if you like to add, subtract, multiply and divide for kicks ;), but, for the most part, only the most banal instances of its application are either used or queried for on the web (at least as far as my search engine testing has shown so far)."
