[clue-tech] [spam?] text processing howto

[David L. Anselmi]

Collins Richey wrote:
> You can do the same thing in two lines of perl. I won't bore you with
> the power of pcre engines, but this has been adopted by the likes of
> php, ruby, and even Windows Powershell (ugh!!!).
>
> BTW, I would love to see a thorough presentation of AWK as a topic for
> a CLUE meeting. AWK is indeed a powreful utility, but I, for one, have
> always been too lazy to learn it!

I knew AWK before I learned perl.  There's a relatively small set of problems that awk is as good or 
better than perl (like this one).  Beyond that AWK is not nearly as easy to use or read.  So you're 
better off knowing perl.  And I'm not aware of anything nearly as good as the Camel and Bighorn 
books for copying AWK examples from.

Dave