> I think awk gets a pass because it's a programming language with a handy syntax for running small scripts Even more than that, awk's orientation towards filt

> I think awk gets a pass because it's a programming language with a handy syntax for running small scripts Even more than that, awk's orientation towards filtering text lines made up of fields makes handling many little pipeline tasks amazingly simple. In combination with being a very nice little general-purpose programming language with good string support, awk is a no-brainer first stop for a lot of things. [Other more recent programming languages generally have many more features, much better implementations etc, but nothing has improved or really even matched awk's smooth integration into the unix pipeline. Perl, for instance, although it's long tried to bill itself as a replacement for awk, and explicitly includes special features for such usage, can be significantly more awkward (er... :) for the sort of tiny little filters awk's really good at.]