Ancient machines turning on (was Re: eBay strikes again...)

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Sun Nov 1 15:16:56 1998

Ward Donald Griffiths III <gram_at_cnct.com> wrote:
> And I challenge you to find any "non-worst" aspects of awk. After
> almost 16 years, I still can't use it without having the man page
> immediately at hand.

I like awk. It's a simple language that is good at solving certain
classes of problems (and terrible at others). But I'd rather have a bunch
of small tools that each solve some problems well than one huge
kitchen-sink tool that solves all problems badly. That was, after all,
the original Unix philosophy (see _Software Tools_ and _The Unix Programming
Environment_).

To each their own...
Received on Sun Nov 01 1998 - 15:16:56 GMT