RMS says: "Use BSD, for goodness sake!"

[Brad Knowles]

At 12:51 PM +0100 2003/06/26, Paul Robinson wrote:

>>  Does anyone actually USE awk?
>
>  Yes.

	Yes.

>>  Other than to filter columns that is.
>
>  That's exactly what it's used for.

	Yes.  Otherwise, I would use `cut`.

	Awk is extensively used by the shell script tools that I am the 
maintainer for.  Granted, I inherited most of them from people like 
Bryan Beecher (e.g., popstats, smtpstats), Paul Mockapetris (e.g., 
doc, lamers), etc... but it is extensively used by these tools.  I 
hope to move the ones I care most about to Perl, or work to 
incorporate their features into other programs (e.g., dnswalk, lire 
from logreport.org, etc...).

>>  But as awk is usually available on other Unixes, I'm apt to rely on it's
>>  existance.  So I'd hate to see it go.
>
>  There is nothing stopping it being a port/package.

	True, but I'd still hate to see it go.  It's been such a basic 
part of *nix for so long that I think way more people have come to 
count on it than anyone realizes.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
     -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

GCS/IT d+(-) s:+(++)>: a C++(+++)$ UMBSHI++++$ P+>++ L+ !E-(---) W+++(--) N+
!w--- O- M++ V PS++(+++) PE- Y+(++) PGP>+++ t+(+++) 5++(+++) X++(+++) R+(+++)
tv+(+++) b+(++++) DI+(++++) D+(++) G+(++++) e++>++++ h--- r---(+++)* z(+++)