What do y'all use awk for really? 20 of using Linux, I've never had to use awk. And I've done a looot of scripting in my days. Anything from building my own clone of polybar using eww (with loads of scripts underneath), to automated systems for bulk handling of student assignments back at uni when I used to help out with grading and such.

What's awk good for that other standard utilities can't do?

[–] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 8 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I've been using Linux for 25 years, awk is a more recent addition to my arsenal, but rapidly becoming more and more useful.

For example, awk is extremely helpful if you want to rearrange columns, do math on columns, essentially do things that would take multiple lines of bash with cut and read.

[–] nik9000@programming.dev 3 points 4 months ago

I used to switch to perl or python if I needed awk. These days I don't tend to run into it as much. Not sure if that was a good choice. But it's how I spent the past 25 years.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

That makes sense! I think I'd be running Nushell for this if the scripts didn't need to be very portable, sounds like a good use case for that.

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