Awk has an enormous advantage over Perl: the Awk manual is short, and you can conceivably learn Awk just by reading the man page. If I go back years later and r

Awk has an enormous advantage over Perl: the Awk manual is short, and you can conceivably learn Awk just by reading the man page. If I go back years later and read an Awk program, I’m more likely to understand it. Using Perl for many tasks would be like using Matlab to add up a column of numbers. You can, but there’s also something to be said for just using a pocket calculator.