AWK Programming Language

read the comments: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=%22awk%22

If awk's syntax was a subset of either python or JS, wouldn't it be better to just use python or JS?

awk is a fantastic command line application that is useful for filtering, basic computations and transformations that other basic utilities (e.g. cut, sort, etc.) + grep don't (readily/easily) provide. I suppose it might be a bit archaic these days, but for someone familiar with it, it's often faster to compose an awk command than to write even a very quick/short script in, e.g., python or perl, for certain things.

Awk is old but great, designed to chew through lines of text files with ease, and has great defaults that minimize the amount of awk code you actually have to write to do anything. It's underrated.

Awk in 2 minutes : google "awk this" and "awk that" :D

Learn AWK. It's tremendously simpler than Perl, and even more omnipresent. In a week or two of study and tinkering you'll be an expert.

Perl is sometimes "better awk".

Significant past threads. I had to leave a ton of submissions out! Any others that are particularly good?Awk: The Power and Promise of a 40-Year-Old Language - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28441887 - Sept 2021 (118 comments)Awk is the coolest tool you don't know - https:/

But thats why there are tools like awk.

AWK is my hammer and I will abuse it to every end