Scripts for computing the average of a list of numbers in a data file

Question

The file data.txt contains the following:

1.00 1.23 54.4 213.2 3.4

The output of the scripts are supposed to be:

ave: 54.646

Some simple scripts are preferred.

Answer 1

Here is one method:

$ awk '{s+=$1}END{print "ave:",s/NR}' RS=" " file
ave: 54.646