I'm not sure what you're thinking of, but there at least 3 prominent and still-relevant awk implementations: nawk (One True Awk / AT&T awk / BWK awk): the orig

I'm not sure what you're thinking of, but there at least 3 prominent and still-relevant awk implementations: nawk (One True Awk / AT&T awk / BWK awk): the original awk, still maintained; is used by macOS, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD https://github.com/onetrueawk/awk https://github.com/onetrueawk/awk mawk (Mike's awk): the default awk on Debian https://invisible-island.net/mawk/ https://invisible-island.net/mawk/ gawk (GNU awk): the default awk in lots of other places https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/ https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/