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People are often surprised when I mention that awk is Turing complete. It's quite a powerful tool, I can't imagine loving the command line as much as I do witho

• bluesmoon 10y ago
  even sed is turing complete. I once did a talk about this at Opensource Bridge: http://tech.bluesmoon.info/2008/09/programming-patterns-in-sed.html http://tech.bluesmoon.info/2008/09/programming-patterns-in-s...
• andrewbinstock 10y ago
  Meaning no disrespect, but I am constantly surprised by how this detail is frequently brought up as if were an unexpected aspect of a language. Just about any minimal scripting language and many tools are Turing-complete (LaTex, Minecraft, etc. among the latter.) It's really a low bar to clear. In fact, it would be far more surprising if a language such as awk with counters, conditional statements, the ability to jump to statements (i.e., loops), and the ability to change memory were not Turing complete. Edit: clarity