148
Is anyone using awk?
(lemmy.world)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
148 points (100.0% liked)
Linux
48332 readers
404 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
I think it's pretty niche but is a great tool for parsing / converting data into a format that is more easily digested by another program.
Think for example a report from an 80's system that spits out many tab separated values in a different format based on some code. Then these tables are all separated by two blank lines and order of them is randomised. To top that off you need to then pipe it all to a different program that only accepts a specific format.
You could do it in Python by doing a parse, process, stringify code but if you know awk you can do all those steps at the same time with less code.
Sure, in the age of REST the Python approach is better but awk is a very powerful tool for the "I have a specific output but need a specific input" problem.