Learn just a little Awk (2010)

Re:Learn just a little Awk (2010) by vram22 on Friday June 15, 2018 @06:49PM (#17324368)

>If you are interested in learning Awk, I highly recommend "The AWK Programming Language" by Aho, Kernighan, and Weinberger. It's about the same size as the original "The C Programming Language" and is equally well-written.

I'm a big fan of small utilities :) - as I sometimes say in my email sig; but more importantly, I'm a big fan of Kernighan et al, where by "et al" I mean the others from the core early Unix days, such as Dennis Ritchie, Rob Pike, Ken Thompson and many unnamed others, from whom I (and tons of others) learned about the Unix command-line (tools), the shell (scripting), and the Unix philosophy [1].

Had written this just a few weeks ago on HN, in the thread titled "Technical Writing: Learning from Kernighan", but worth repeating here in the context of this thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17163276

It's a list of his books. I guess many may not know of some of them - I know I didn't.

[1]:

The Unix Philosophy in One Lesson:

http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s07.html

Attitude Matters Too:

http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s09.html

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Re:Learn just a little Awk (2010) by akavel on Saturday June 16, 2018 @09:48AM (#17327369)

As to one sentence in particular in ch01s09:

"If someone has already solved a problem once, don't let pride or politics suck you into solving it a second time rather than re-using."

I'd strongly argue it's overzealous. As much as I agree "reinventing the wheel" is dangerous, tempting, and can quickly spiral to yak shaving, but Unix itself, and all the good it brought, is a prime example of "solving [a problem] a second time" after Multics.

In other words, I'd restate it in Sage Speak™: "Don't do this. Except when you need to." ;P Or, just want to have fun :P

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Re:Learn just a little Awk (2010) by vram22 on Saturday June 16, 2018 @12:50PM (#17328145)

>But Unix itself, and all the good it brought, is a prime example of "solving [a problem] a second time" after Multics.

Not sure about that. I mean, I know it came after Multics and was inspired by it (due to some of the early Unix people having worked on Multics), including that the name was originally Unics (I've heard, as a word play on Multics, because it was originally written by one person or was originally a single-user OS, maybe), but I am not so sure that all the good it brought was from Multics. Likely Unix brought some new stuff too. Others who know better may be able to say more.

>In other words, I'd restate it in Sage Speak™: "Don't do this. Except when you need to." ;P Or, just want to have fun :P

Good one. A bit Zennish :) Check out one of ESR's other compilations, the Unix Koans of Master Foo, if not seen already ...

http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/unixkoans/introduction.html

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Learn just a little Awk (2010) by akavel on Saturday June 16, 2018 @04:15PM (#17329141)

Wasn't meaning that the good was from Multics. Just that Unix was after Multics, "solving [a similar problem] a second time". In fact, that Unix brought extra good doing this, actually strenghtens the thesis that reinventing the wheel may bear good fruit :)

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Re:Learn just a little Awk (2010) by vram22 on Sunday June 17, 2018 @07:59AM (#17332002)

Got you now, misunderstood earlier, sorry :)

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Re:Learn just a little Awk (2010) by vram22 on Saturday June 16, 2018 @09:54AM (#17327397)

I sort of agree. I didn't quote those sections in the sense of recommending that the advice in them be followed strictly, and to the letter. Also, ESR is known to talk a bit that way - sort of overzealous, as you put it. But that is part of the fun of reading his stuff. As long as one takes it with a pinch of salt, and common sense, it is okay, and one usually gets to learn something from his writings.

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