I try not to plug it every time I see a submission about awk, but here I must recommend freedomben's presentation "awk: Hack the Planet!" [0]

It starts off with similar background and praises for a few minutes before spending the rest of the hour crash coursing you through awk, then leaving you with a very approachable, digestible, and realistic set of exercises (and optionally, a second video covering his solutions).

I keep a text file with a copy of the questions and my solutions on a public gh repo, so I can quickly refer to it from anywhere when needed.

I am much more powerful on the command line because of it.

[Edit]

[0] https://github.com/FreedomBen/awk-hack-the-planet

Originally encountered @ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25144697