Every Linux Geek Needs to Know Sed and Awk. Here’s Why… - The Tech Edvocate ( www.thetechedvocate.org )

Xeelee , 1 year ago

I'll probably need a few more lines in Python, but I can do everything i want and don't have to deal with the cryptic syntax. I once had to use awk because some extra pigheaded sysadmin refused to install Python on an AIX machine. Glad i don't work there any more.

tal , 1 year ago

Python isn't really a fantastic drop-in replacement for them, IMHO, though there is some overlap.

There are a bunch of Unix tools that let one concisely put a lot of logic into a single command line. They lower the bar to throwing a lot of logic into that single line.

Python's whitespace-sensitive and requires newlines. I guess theoretically you could use a HEREDOC or something, but realistically, if you use Python, you're going to go author a throwaway script and then execute it, which raises the bar to just including it in your command lines.

I think that Perl is probably closer to a middle ground between "application-oriented programming languages" and "single command line use". I think that it'd be reasonable to simply use perl -pie as an alternative to awk especially, though having sed's conciseness is still nice.