uawk-bench

January 14, 2026 · View on GitHub

Benchmark suite for comparing AWK implementations.

Latest Results (uawk v0.2.2)

uawk wins 16/16 benchmarks vs GoAWK on Linux (10MB dataset, 10 runs).

Summary

vs	Wins	Notable
GoAWK	16/16	alternation 31x, email 14x, inner 14x
gawk	13/16	loses on ipaddr, regex, version
mawk	10/16	loses on anchored, charclass, inner, groupby, wordcount, suffix

Detailed Results (Linux CI)

Benchmark	uawk	uawk-j4	goawk	gawk	mawk
alternation	23ms	17ms	719ms	33ms	28ms
anchored	15ms	15ms	21ms	32ms	7ms
charclass	17ms	16ms	42ms	29ms	9ms
count	37ms	24ms	61ms	61ms	43ms
csv	67ms	42ms	96ms	117ms	90ms
email	23ms	22ms	340ms	48ms	631ms
filter	83ms	48ms	108ms	117ms	88ms
groupby	200ms	108ms	269ms	311ms	145ms
inner	22ms	22ms	298ms	42ms	12ms
ipaddr	46ms	34ms	136ms	39ms	103ms
regex	80ms	49ms	248ms	44ms	455ms
select	68ms	44ms	92ms	127ms	66ms
suffix	23ms	21ms	50ms	32ms	21ms
sum	74ms	46ms	97ms	118ms	80ms
version	44ms	33ms	128ms	37ms	96ms
wordcount	211ms	108ms	236ms	303ms	165ms

Parallel Mode Speedups (-j4)

Benchmark	Sequential	Parallel	Improvement
wordcount	211ms	108ms	-49%
groupby	200ms	108ms	-46%
filter	83ms	48ms	-42%
regex	80ms	49ms	-39%

Test environment: Ubuntu 24.04, GitHub Actions runner, Go 1.25.5

See CHANGELOG.md for version history.

Supported AWKs

AWK	Description
uawk	High-performance AWK in Go with coregex regex engine
goawk	Reference Go AWK by Ben Hoyt
gawk	GNU AWK
mawk	Fast C AWK (Linux only)

Benchmarks

Program	Description	Data	Pattern Type
sum.awk	Sum numeric columns	numeric	-
count.awk	Count lines and fields	text	-
filter.awk	Filter by condition	numeric	-
select.awk	Extract specific fields	numeric	-
groupby.awk	Group and aggregate	keyvalue	-
wordcount.awk	Word frequency	text	-
regex.awk	Pattern `[a-zA-Z]+[0-9]+`	text	Composite
csv.awk	CSV field sum	csv	-
ipaddr.awk	IP address matching	log	DigitPrefilter
alternation.awk	Log level matching	log	Aho-Corasick
email.awk	Email pattern matching	text	CharClass
suffix.awk	Suffix pattern matching	log	Reverse search
version.awk	Version number matching	log	Digit sequences
charclass.awk	Character class patterns	text	CharClass
inner.awk	Inner literal patterns	log	Inner literal
anchored.awk	Anchored patterns	log	Start anchor

Usage

# Build
go build -o bin/awkbench ./cmd/awkbench

# Run benchmarks
./bin/awkbench -size 10MB -runs 10

# Generate data only
./bin/awkbench -generate -size 100MB

# Test specific AWKs
./bin/awkbench -awk uawk,goawk -runs 5

# Custom directories
./bin/awkbench -data ./testdata -output ./results

uawk Modes

# Default (POSIX regex)
./bin/awkbench -awk uawk

# Fast mode (non-POSIX regex)
./bin/awkbench -awk uawk-fast

# Parallel execution (v0.2.0+)
./bin/awkbench -awk uawk-j4    # 4 workers
./bin/awkbench -awk uawk-j8    # 8 workers

Note: Parallel mode (-j N) requires multiple input files to show benefit. Single-file benchmarks run sequentially.

Output

Results are written to results/ directory:

results.md — Markdown with detailed statistics
results.json — JSON for programmatic analysis
results.csv — CSV for spreadsheets

CI

Benchmarks run on push to main and weekly. Results are in GitHub Actions artifacts.

gh workflow run benchmark.yml -f size=100MB

Requirements

Go 1.25+
uawk, goawk (go install)
gawk, mawk (system packages)

License

MIT