[CarolineW]

That I did not know - thank you. We here still think of awk as fundamentally different from other pipeline facilities such as tr, sed, sort, uniq, and so on, but I can see why it could, perhaps should, be though of as being "shell".

I guess I was triggered by the fact that the proposed shell solution is:

* not on a command line (although it could be),

* is significantly longer than the original command line solution, and

* gives a different result.

But you're right, it's shell. I might, however, given my background, and remembering as I do its first introduction, always have trouble thinking of it as such.

[majewsky]

> We here still think of awk as fundamentally different from other pipeline facilities such as [...] sed

If you consider awk "not-shell" because it's an entire language, then it's really inconsistent to consider sed "shell". sed is a stream programming language. For example, this is a Sudoku solver written in sed: http://sed.sourceforge.net/local/games/sedoku.sed.html

[CarolineW]

Actually, we are pretty marginal on sed, but point taken. It feels like there's a difference between "stream mode" and "program mode".

I remember when awk was first implemented. sed was already standard, and awk was this new thing. I love it, and for some things it's my "go to" language. That colors how I think of it - I think of it as a language.

But this has been done to death, everyone is jumping on me, so there seems little to add.

[vram22]

>But this has been done to death, everyone is jumping on me, so there seems little to add.

No one is "jumping on you", as you put it, neither the other people who replied to your comments, nor me. It's absolutely normal in a tech forum (more so in such ones, because they are mostly fact-based) and in fact even in any online or real-life forum, for that matter, for people to point it out if they think some statement a person has made, is wrong.

In fact, you did exactly that (point out that you thought I was wrong - see your comments that I've quoted just below), in your top-level reply to my original comment about my having created solutions in Python and shell, which is what started this whole sub-thread. Going by your logic, I should have complained about you jumping on me :)

Here's where you pointed out that (you thought) I was wrong:

>Your "shell" solution isn't really a shell solution, it's an awk solution.

>It's really valuable to know awk, but it's a bit misleading to claim that "it's shell".

Not only that, you claimed that it was misleading, without having any way to know whether I had any intention to mislead or not. Come off it. You cannot read my mind. It's mine, not yours. Come to think of it, that was a poor judgement call on your part, too, because even if I had some intention of misleading people, which I did/do not, what could I possibly gain by misleading them about whether some code is a shell solution or an awk solution? The whole "misleading" idea is a figment of your imagination, or of your unclear thinking, I'm sorry to have to say.

Anyway, this thread has gone on for too long, with barely any benefit to anyone. I'll just briefly touch on that fundamental flaw in one of your points about my work, that I mentioned in another comment, and then be done with this whole thing. Doing that in a separate comment.

[vram22]

>I remember when awk was first implemented. sed was already standard, and awk was this new thing. I love it, and for some things it's my "go to" language. That colors how I think of it - I think of it as a language.

Google for "sed is Turing complete" and see the results, including the post at catonmat.net - Peteris Krumins' blog :) There's even an HN thread about it.

[lapnitnelav]

I can pull off some ok stuff with the shell toolkit, including awk and sed but that's a whole different level.

Whoever authored that, mad props.

[kazinator]

If you ever have a low moment, worrying about about the marketability of the skills you have developed in your side interests, you can always think of these people that think it's a good use of their time to learn how to develop a Nintendo Game Boy emulator in Sed.