Linux

I use awk all the time. a very common and probably simplest reason I use it is it's ability to handle variable column locations for data.

if you know you always want the last field you can do something like

awk '{print $NF}'

but usually using it as for performing more advanced operations all in one go without having to pipe something three times.

sure you can do grep cut grep printf, but you can instead do the pattern matching, the field, the formatting, whatever you need to all in one place.

it's also got a bunch of more advanced usage of course since it's its own language. one of my favorite advanced one liners is one that will recognize if it is going to print a duplicate line anywhere in your output and prevent it. in cases where you don't want to sort your output but you also want to remove duplicates it is extremely helpful and quick rather than running post-processing on the output in another way.

all that said main reason I use it is because I know it and it's fast, there's nothing you can do in awk that you can't do in Python or whatever else you're more comfortable with. The best tool for the job is the one that gets it done quickly and accurately. unless your environment is limited and it prevents the installation of tools you're more familiar with then there's no real reason to use this over Python.