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awk isn't readable. modern programming languages can do things much better than awk in much lesser lines of code.all of them have better code to work with text

by v3ss0n 3y ago

awk isn't readable. modern programming languages can do things much better than awk in much lesser lines of code.all of them have better code to work with text and string.

GrumpySloth 3y ago
> much lesser lines of code Doubtful. awk has a lot of implicit behaviour which allows the programmer to write very terse scripts. An equivalent Python program is usually several times longer.
csydas 3y ago
> awk isn't readable. I mean, russian is also unreadable, until you know how to read it. awk's power for me isn't the LOC needed to accomplish a task, its power is that I can express the business logic I need very easily and very quickly, and the resulting code is really fast. I am by no means great with awk, but I can go months without touching awk, encounter some problem where awk shines, and in a few minutes or less I have exactly what I need. you can learn to be extremely productive with awk in a few hours and it's very comforting to have this in your toolset moving forward. Essential? Probably not, but I like that I don't need to break my thought process when working with awk because it's just so natural to express what I want awk to do that I don't really "think" about writing awk, I just write it.
srean 3y ago
Disagree on both counts. For the problem domain that Awk targets, its close to as good as it gets. Lot of the line reading, delimiting, chunking etc is already done for you. You the programmer dont have to deal with re-implementing that same old ceremony. You get straight to the point of writing the transformations that you want. If you break out into Python for that, that's a bit like being at your best and formal self, your best table manners, the first time you are meeting your fiance's parents. Awk on the other hand is like being with you old childhood pal, partner in crime, from your old street where the need for such ceremonies do not exist. With modern awks you can write extensions for them. Mawk is plenty fast too. One thing that still grates though is that the 'split' function does not come with a corresponding 'join' and one has to iterate through the array explicitly to join.
- v3ss0n 3y ago
  enough talk, show me the code
  - srean 3y ago
    seek and ye shall find. Enough open source awk out there

by v3ss0n 3y ago

awk isn't readable. modern programming languages can do things much better than awk in much lesser lines of code.all of them have better code to work with text and string.

GrumpySloth 3y ago

> much lesser lines of code Doubtful. awk has a lot of implicit behaviour which allows the programmer to write very terse scripts. An equivalent Python program is usually several times longer.

csydas 3y ago

> awk isn't readable. I mean, russian is also unreadable, until you know how to read it. awk's power for me isn't the LOC needed to accomplish a task, its power is that I can express the business logic I need very easily and very quickly, and the resulting code is really fast. I am by no means great with awk, but I can go months without touching awk, encounter some problem where awk shines, and in a few minutes or less I have exactly what I need. you can learn to be extremely productive with awk in a few hours and it's very comforting to have this in your toolset moving forward. Essential? Probably not, but I like that I don't need to break my thought process when working with awk because it's just so natural to express what I want awk to do that I don't really "think" about writing awk, I just write it.

srean 3y ago

Disagree on both counts. For the problem domain that Awk targets, its close to as good as it gets. Lot of the line reading, delimiting, chunking etc is already done for you. You the programmer dont have to deal with re-implementing that same old ceremony. You get straight to the point of writing the transformations that you want. If you break out into Python for that, that's a bit like being at your best and formal self, your best table manners, the first time you are meeting your fiance's parents. Awk on the other hand is like being with you old childhood pal, partner in crime, from your old street where the need for such ceremonies do not exist. With modern awks you can write extensions for them. Mawk is plenty fast too. One thing that still grates though is that the 'split' function does not come with a corresponding 'join' and one has to iterate through the array explicitly to join.

v3ss0n 3y ago
enough talk, show me the code
- srean 3y ago
  seek and ye shall find. Enough open source awk out there