bash

The following is a list of variables that awk sets automatically on certain occasions in order to provide information to your program. The variables that are specific to gawk are marked with a pound sign (#). These variables are gawk extensions. In other awk implementations or if gawk is in compatibility mode (see section Command-Line Options ), they are not special.

VARIABLE NAME DESCRIPTION
FS input field separator variable
OFS Output Field Separator
RS Input Record Separator variable
ORS Output Record Separator Variable
NR Number of Records
NF Number of Fields in a record
FILENAME Name of the current input file
FNR Number of Records relative to the current input file
RLENGTH length of the substring matched by the match() function
RSTART first position in the string matched by match() function

FS - input field separator variable

It represents the (input) field separator and its default value is space. You can also change this by using -F command line option.