Using awk to count the number of occurrences of a word in a column

Question

03/03/2014 12:31:21 BLOCK 10.1.34.1 11:22:33:44:55:66

03/03/2014 12:31:22 ALLOW 10.1.34.2 AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF

03/03/2014 12:31:25 BLOCK 10.1.34.1 55:66:77:88:99:AA
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Answer 1

I tested your statement

awk ' BEGIN {count=0;}  { if ($3 == "BLOCK") count+=1} end {print $count}' firewall.log

and was able to successfully count BLOCK by doing two changes

1. end should be in caps
2. remove $ from print $count

So, it should be:

awk ' BEGIN {count=0;}  { if ($3 == "BLOCK") count+=1} END {print count}' firewall.log 

A simpler statement that works too is:

awk '($3 == "BLOCK") {count++ } END { print count }' firewall.log