Yes, awk, the command-line tool that does a better job with math and with column manipulations than sed, is available for the sl5500. I have installed and am using it on my sl5500 with ROM 2.38, and also on my sl6000 with ROM 1.12:
http://ossh.com/zaurus/feed/awk_0.0.1_arm.ipk
http://www.oesf.org/howto/feed/awk_0.0.1_arm.ipk
http://paar.kh.edu.tw/download/zaurus/zaurus-soft/utils-admin/awk_0.0.1_arm.ipk
md5sum is a handy tool you can use in Linux to make sure the file you have is not corrupt. The md5sum for the above ipks should all be 80bb7f96962e8d0d4b408625ff6804fa, so we know they are identical binaries to the one that works on my Zaurus. The first two are for sure, I have not checked the others out, but added them in case either or both of the first two sites are down.
If you want to just jump in and do something with awk, and skip figuring it all out, ....you can just enter "awk" with no arguments, and you should find some very simple basic examples at the end of the error message, such as the following terse examples from my copy of GNU Awk 3.1.1, which is Copyright (C) 1989, 1991-2002 Free Software Foundation:
Examples:gawk '{ sum += $1 }; END { print sum }' file
gawk -F: '{ print $1 }' /etc/passwd
The above examples use gawk instead of awk, because it is GNU awk, but the syntax is the same for both.
For a little more task-oriented help with your first quick plunge into awk, I strongly recommend using the following set of simple, classic awk examples:
HANDY ONE-LINERS FOR AWK by Eric Pement
http://www.pement.org/awk/awk1line.txt
And then, for an excellent, user-friendly introduction and orientation to awk, read the following:
An Awk Primer by Greg Goebel at
http://www.vectorsite.net/tsawk.html
Here is a shorter explanation of how to use awk, with more examples:
How to Use AWK by Patrick Hartigan at
http://sparky.rice.edu/~hartigan/awk.html
This Page Was Revised December 6, 2012