I found the syntax to be like regex plus something close to C. I expect back in the day when everyone using unix was also using C, this made awk syntax pretty

I found the syntax to be like regex plus something close to C. I expect back in the day when everyone using unix was also using C, this made awk syntax pretty obvious (certainly was the case for me). But if you don't know C, I suppose the syntax might be less obvious. I use awk all the time in one liners.