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awk one-liners are a slam dunk. The tough question whether to invest in more complex awk programming. Invariably some processing task requires more complex logi

awk one-liners are a slam dunk. The tough question whether to invest in more complex awk programming. Invariably some processing task requires more complex logic and awk provides that, but in the terse and arcane ways of early computing. Yet reaching for a modern alternative is also an overhead, may not be particularly intuitive either (hello pandas) and may even have performance issues...

martincmartin 3y ago
For me, the big problem is libraries. Even a personal file of common functions doesn't seem that well supported, and there just doesn't seem to be a way to get third party libraries. When I start needing helper functions and splitting it into multiple lines is usually when I reach for Python instead. And then sigh, because my program will be 2 to 3 times bigger. Ruby is a great awk replacement, but unless other people at your job know it, you can't expect others to maintain it.
- cb321 3y ago
  I'd bet you could do a harness like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37292882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37292882 mentions but with Python in like an hour and then you could stay in both one syntax and more significantly in one library ecosystem. Why, 3 such things may even already exist. :) The syntax/semantics is not as optimized for 1-liner brevity, but everything has trade-offs.
- nmz 3y ago
  The problem of libraries is namespaces, since everything is global its not worth it. and also incredibly problematic (especially since match() actually sets a 2 globals) fortunately gawk offers namespaces, it even has a flag for loading libraries from a path { gawk -i inplace } has replaced sed -i for me a couple of times. But yeah, its still lacking. PS: This is gawk only though, but awk -f $awkmodules/mymodule.awk -f <(echo '') is an ok replacement, even though its just concatenating files
SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
I used to not like them pre chat gpt. But nowadays when you can paste an arcane awk/sed illegible one liner into an AI and have it describe step by step what it’s doing in totally fine with it now. I still don’t like them as much as a few lines of python for unit test ability reasons but sometimes you just straight up don’t need unit tests for some quick data munging task
- kagevf 3y ago
  > have it describe step by step what it’s doing And then building on the original “update the script to do $thing” where $thing isn’t obvious/trivial. It saves a lot of time.

martincmartin 3y ago

For me, the big problem is libraries. Even a personal file of common functions doesn't seem that well supported, and there just doesn't seem to be a way to get third party libraries. When I start needing helper functions and splitting it into multiple lines is usually when I reach for Python instead. And then sigh, because my program will be 2 to 3 times bigger. Ruby is a great awk replacement, but unless other people at your job know it, you can't expect others to maintain it.

cb321 3y ago
I'd bet you could do a harness like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37292882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37292882 mentions but with Python in like an hour and then you could stay in both one syntax and more significantly in one library ecosystem. Why, 3 such things may even already exist. :) The syntax/semantics is not as optimized for 1-liner brevity, but everything has trade-offs.
nmz 3y ago
The problem of libraries is namespaces, since everything is global its not worth it. and also incredibly problematic (especially since match() actually sets a 2 globals) fortunately gawk offers namespaces, it even has a flag for loading libraries from a path { gawk -i inplace } has replaced sed -i for me a couple of times. But yeah, its still lacking. PS: This is gawk only though, but awk -f $awkmodules/mymodule.awk -f <(echo '') is an ok replacement, even though its just concatenating files

SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago

I used to not like them pre chat gpt. But nowadays when you can paste an arcane awk/sed illegible one liner into an AI and have it describe step by step what it’s doing in totally fine with it now. I still don’t like them as much as a few lines of python for unit test ability reasons but sometimes you just straight up don’t need unit tests for some quick data munging task

kagevf 3y ago
> have it describe step by step what it’s doing And then building on the original “update the script to do $thing” where $thing isn’t obvious/trivial. It saves a lot of time.