On 01.08.2023 06:11, Kpop 2GM wrote:
"The Awk Book" presumably refers to the original "The AWK
Programming Language" by Aho, Kernighan, and Weinberger, published
in 1988.
That said, even the original authors didn't do a particular good job
at selling awk's real strengths.
When I had first read about the awk command I was curiously looking
for more detailed information than just "it's a language to process
text patterns", so I was quite glad to find that book. It came out
very quickly, only a year after the official release (three years
after the stable version had been developed). The book is very well
written and provides everything you need to understand the concepts
of Awk which are, IMO, the "real strengths" of the Awk language. Of
course it's not a long developed "hacker book" with tips and tricks.
Neither does it has all that fancy stuff that we were publishing or
discussing here in this newsgroup during the past decades. I agree
with you, though, that there wasn't - maybe still isn't - anything
worth on that "hacker-level". But I wouldn't blame that old book or
their authors for this deficiency. After all folks who came up with
advanced ideas likely read that book (and maybe other later sources)
to develop application ideas that the original authors did not have
in mind.
And I also think that the more advanced methods that contribute to
Awk's strengths further would likely have repelled possible users;
many are cryptic and not too easy to understand for newbies. - The
book was, IMHO, exactly what was necessary at that time! - I would
still recommend it to Awk-beginners, even today.[*]
If i began my awk journey with that
book, I would've jumped ship to perl longlong ago.
I had been starting with that book (and a brain that came for free),
and nothing else. (And at times I'm still locking into that book to
look up things.)
With which sources have you "began [your] awk journey", since you
seem to avoid Perl and enjoy Awk on an advanced level?
Janis
[*] With the cutback of the unpleasantly high price of the booklet.
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