Same as usual, read every book about it![0] and don't try to learn from the man page. I think the original book by A, W and K (the 2nd edition anyway) was best. Also Arnold Robbins' books Sed and Awk and Effective AWK Programming are great.
The GNU Awk User's Guide[1] is amazingly detailed, but the new AWK has bloated a lot, has 1000 features where the older one had a few dozen, and those core ones should be learnt first. (But people still like programming with it, and kept asking for features..) Hmm I don't think I use any of the new features, maybe I should...
But really, it's very simple, I can't thinking of anything that's been anything like as easy to learn, except maybe BASIC. With which AWK shares some similarities - the friendliness of it, the BEGIN and END..
The GNU Awk User's Guide[1] is amazingly detailed, but the new AWK has bloated a lot, has 1000 features where the older one had a few dozen, and those core ones should be learnt first. (But people still like programming with it, and kept asking for features..) Hmm I don't think I use any of the new features, maybe I should...
But really, it's very simple, I can't thinking of anything that's been anything like as easy to learn, except maybe BASIC. With which AWK shares some similarities - the friendliness of it, the BEGIN and END..
[1] http://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.html
[0] Or if there are too many, get names from lists of best books on a subject.