I would have loved to see the Knuth version (which was literate Pascal with WEB, I think) compared as well, but I imagine that is a nightmare to build. I wonder

I would have loved to see the Knuth version (which was literate Pascal with WEB, I think) compared as well, but I imagine that is a nightmare to build. I wonder if the source code is available anywhere, I can't recall ever seeing it. I think Knuth used a custom-made trie, and it would be interesting to see that compared to these hash table based solutions. Also: this comparison honestly just makes me love AWK more and more. So little code needed! So concise, and pretty ok performance as well! AWK really is an underrated little language.