generate a report

I am trying to generate a report for a file called phone_book

awk -f {phone_book}

why does this not work? Nothing happens at all.

awk '{print}' phone_book

Inputfile is the last argument without option. Awk-scriptfile is argument for option -f.

awk -f awkfile inputdata

Or you can give the awklines also in commandline

awk 'some awk
lines' inputfile