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Living Room / Re: Regular Expressions (Regex) - Your Thoughts?
« Last post by 40hz on November 29, 2010, 10:50 AM »I *think* I read a number of years ago about AWK and it being common to have TCL/Tk front ends for it. Is that right, or am I confused there?-Renegade (November 28, 2010, 08:13 PM)
Never saw that although there's no reason why you couldn't wrap a GUI around an AWK program's functionality. Don't know why you'd bother since there's already things like GUI search and replace utilities where it's already been done. Also sorta defeats the purpose of AWK since it's really intended to be used as a programming language rather than an app.
Note: you can do much (or all) of what AWK does with PERL. If my memory serves, I seem to remember Larry Wall cited AWK (along with SED and shell) as contributing influences on the design of his baby.
One interesting thing about AWK is that it's like riding a bike. It takes practice to use it effectively. But once you learn it, you never seem to forget. I haven't done any serious AWK-ing for a number of years. But I had an oddball project a few months ago where an AWK script was the perfect way to get the job done.
After a few false starts, and a look in the manual (RTFM right?
), I was back in business. I doubt I'd be able to do that with many other languages I've learned and allowed to lapse over the years. That alone is testimonial to just how logical and well designed a tool AWK is IMHO. 
Also +1 w/rjbull on The AWK Programming Language book. One of the clearest and best written computer books of all time. Too bad they couldn't all be like that.
Once again being simultaneously 'spot on' - and utterly graceless. 
