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

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.