Earlier quoted context omitted.
you were close! the following works as well awk -v FS="\t"
If I am not mistaken, -v is GAWK only.
Every contemporary AWK supports -v. Real AWK from UNIX®️ supported -v since at least the '80's.
Why Learn Awk? (2016)
221–230 of 246 posts
Re: Why Learn Awk? (2016)
#222Re: Why Learn Awk? (2016)
#223I have used awk for decades, but I simply stoped and dropped the habit of using it along with sed and perl. Nowadays I would rather write a program than a script just to avoid memorizing all these tricks and hacks and glitches
Re: Why Learn Awk? (2016)
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
PERL is bloatware by comparison and less likely to be installed on distros than AWK. (e.g, embedded or slim distros. that's why you rarely see nonstandard /bin execs in shell scripts).
Unfortunately, for large files perl is significantly faster than awk. I was working on some very large files doing some splitting, and perl was over an order of magnitude faster.
To be more clear, the unfortunately part was due to the title of this article. I think awk is great, but if you know perl well enough it can easily replace it and be much more versatile
Re: Why Learn Awk? (2016)
#225I use awk because there's an almost 100% chance that it's going to be installed on any unix system I can ssh into. I use awk because I like to visually refine my output incrementally. By combining awk with multiple other basic unix commands and pipes, I can get the data that I want out of the data I have. I'm not writing unit tests or perfect code, I'm using rough tools to do a quick one-off job. For instance, "mail…
> it's not elegant I completely disagree.
Thank you, I too often talk down what I do.
Re: Why Learn Awk? (2016)
#226I use awk because there's an almost 100% chance that it's going to be installed on any unix system I can ssh into. I use awk because I like to visually refine my output incrementally. By combining awk with multiple other basic unix commands and pipes, I can get the data that I want out of the data I have. I'm not writing unit tests or perfect code, I'm using rough tools to do a quick one-off job. For instance, "mail…
I disagree, it's quite elegant if you think in terms of relational algebra operators: * Projection (Π): awk and cut for simple cases * Selection (σ): grep for simple cases, otherwise sed & awk * Rename (ρ): sed * Set operators: join, comm...
Thank you, and thank you (really, not sarcasm) for the new stuff I have to learn about relational algebra. I'm a huge fan of wide/shallow knowledge that allows me to dive into a subject quickly.
Re: Why Learn Awk? (2016)
#227Because for some bizarre reason, "cut" doesn't ship with any decent column selection logic that is the equivalent of awk's $1, $2, etc., even in 2020. That's like 90% of my use of awk right there. I don't know of any easier equivalent of "awk '{ print $2 }'" for what it does. Posted partially so the Internet Correction Squad can froth at the mouth and set me straight, because I'd love to be showed to be wrong here.
> I don't know of any easier equivalent of "awk '{ print $2 }'" for what it does. I'm not sure if you refer spefically to cut, but Perl has something similar and approximaly terse: > echo 'a b c' | perl -lane 'print $F[1]' Also, Perl can slice arrays, which is something that I really miss in Awk.
Perl stole array slicing from AWK's split() function... which slices arrays.
Re: Why Learn Awk? (2016)
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
PERL is bloatware by comparison and less likely to be installed on distros than AWK. (e.g, embedded or slim distros. that's why you rarely see nonstandard /bin execs in shell scripts).
> PERL is bloatware never heard that before
There is a first time for everything, and it's true: Perl is mega bloatware, especially when compared to AWK.
Re: Why Learn Awk? (2016)
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perl used to be part of most distros, but I think favor shifted to Python a few years ago. I wouldn't call it bloat, but yes it is much bigger. At the time you had C (really fast, but cumbersome) and Awk/Bash (good prototyping tools, but not good for large codebases). Perl was the perfect answer to something that is fairly fast, relatively easy to develop in, and easier to write full-sized codebases
Larry Wall referred to the old dichotomy of the “manipulexity” of C for reaching into low-level system details versus the “whipuptitude” of shell, awk, sed, and friends. He targeted Perl for the sweet spot in the unfilled gap between them.
Thanks for explaining it better than me!
Re: Why Learn Awk? (2016)
#230Here are some clever one-liners for awk [1] Please be sure to add your own. [1] - https://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/matching/awk/YXdr/sor...
I have a repo dedicated for some of the cli text processing tools like grep/sed/awk/perl/sort/etc. Here's my one-liner collection for awk [1] [1] https://github.com/learnbyexample/Command-line-text-processi...
That is a very well written set of examples. Clear and concise. Thankyou!