3 ms·
So why for example Awk instead of let's say Perl? The argument of "it's likely to be installed" isn't very compelling.
by shmerl 7y ago
So why for example Awk instead of let's say Perl? The argument of "it's likely to be installed" isn't very compelling.
- dredmorbius 7y agoIf you're versed in both, it comes down to taste, though there really are cases where you'll have awk (usually via busybox) but not Perl. OpenWRT comes to mind (just verified it's not present by default, though yes, packages are available). For a huge number of simple tasks, awk is available and sufficient. It's largely a subset of Perl, so yes, there's some skills overlap, but there are times where knowing awk is the right tool and the available tool will pay off.
- shmerl 7y agoI like Perl regexes more though, especially aliases. Using \d is a lot neater than [0-9] or [[:digit:]].
- dredmorbius 7y agoI hear Perl may support those ;-) (Use the right tool for the job.)