Alex M reviewed The AWK Programming Language by Brian W. Kernighan
Review of 'The AWK Programming Language' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
AWK is a quirky little language. If you spend enough time working in a Unix environment you'll see it crop up once in a while. You can safely ignore it, of course, and go on writing shell scripts or use Python or Ruby to do quick data extraction and manipulation. I've wasted a lot of time writing Python scripts for what would have been a one line AWK program, but quick and dirty data manipulation is what AWK was made for.
This book is written by the "A", the "W" and the "K" in AWK. You couldn't get a more authoritative source even if you tried. But why would you? You'll learn all you need to know--and so much more. From one liners you'll use often to programs that you'll skim through, and then promptly forget, because there's saner ways of doing it these days--at least Python and Ruby have …
AWK is a quirky little language. If you spend enough time working in a Unix environment you'll see it crop up once in a while. You can safely ignore it, of course, and go on writing shell scripts or use Python or Ruby to do quick data extraction and manipulation. I've wasted a lot of time writing Python scripts for what would have been a one line AWK program, but quick and dirty data manipulation is what AWK was made for.
This book is written by the "A", the "W" and the "K" in AWK. You couldn't get a more authoritative source even if you tried. But why would you? You'll learn all you need to know--and so much more. From one liners you'll use often to programs that you'll skim through, and then promptly forget, because there's saner ways of doing it these days--at least Python and Ruby have proper local variables in functions (well, mostly). But that's besides the point. The authors' message is that little languages are fun, productive and that "good enough" is just good enough sometimes.
Should you read this book? Dunno, I'm not you. But if you just want to use AWK, the first two chapters are enough. If, on the other hand, you want to get a taste of the "Unix philosophy" (whatever that is), you can read the whole thing.
Even though it's an artifact of its time, the book is entertaining, and for me it achieved its goal of teaching me how to use AWK.
