this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
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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.
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Does anyone here actually use awk for more than trivial operations? If I ever have to have to consider writing anything substantial with bash/awk/sed/etc, I just start writing a Python script. No hate to the classic tools, but Python is just really nice.
If find myself writing anything I'd call a "program" (rather than just a script) in bash then it's time to think about using a proper language rather than a shell script, let alone awk or sed!
I've reached for some complex awk when I am looking to parse snippets of code where breaking out a full language parser would have been too much.
One example is parsing statements from a Dockerfile but only within certain stages of the image. So I reach for regex range in awk and I can make something that works everywhere.
Of course I probably could have done the same thing in python by controlling the beginning and end via variables, but I like awk sometimes.
Yeah. Heaviest awk I've ever done is extracting a value to a variable from a line with one pattern and using it to populate output from later lines matching another pattern.