[smartmic]

Depending on how complex the task is, I also jump from sort/join/awk/sed to the SQL train more often. But if I have already gone this step, then I would also like to have the whole SQL(ite) power and that would then but really blow up the command line. In such cases I usually write a TCL script, the integration of SQLite3 [0] is quasi native and besides the full SQLite3 functionality I also have flexible extensions (e.g. directly usable TCL procedures of any complexity) at my disposal. Tools like Q represent a middle ground, although they build on SQLite they remain behind in functionality [1]. But as long as I want to keep it simple on the command line while adhering to the UNIX philosophy, coreutils, sed, awk and possibly perl remain my best friends.

[0]: https://www.sqlite.org/tclsqlite.html [1]: http://harelba.github.io/q/#limitations