Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2015 17:44:55 -0400 From: Quartz <quartz@sneakertech.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: awk question Message-ID: <5612EF57.10207@sneakertech.com> In-Reply-To: <20151005165902.ad01c288.freebsd@edvax.de> References: <5611C922.4050007@hiwaay.net> <20151005042129.1f153ec6.freebsd@edvax.de> <5611F776.9090701@hiwaay.net> <56124479.9020505@sneakertech.com> <20151005165902.ad01c288.freebsd@edvax.de>
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> The form "input | step1 | step2 | step3 | step4> result" usually > is more readable That's what I meant my being easier to understand conceptually. I agree about being more readable- even though this format sometimes needs the 'useless cat' it's often my preferred coding style, especially in scripts where the input might change around. > Additionally, awk isn't that hard to learn. Reading "man awk" will > provide you with a good background. And if you're already a C > programmer, you'll see that many things you can do in C will also > work similarly in awk, which _might_ not even be a good thing. :-) The problem with awk is the whole BEGIN/END/braces thing and how commas interact with the operands. It's not very much like sh or C syntax (or any other syntax) and new users tend to get really confused. Also, different versions of awk handle math (esp floating point) with different rounding/precision/overflow, making calculations vary between installations, only further adding to the confusion.
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