Why you should learn just a little Awk - A Tutorial by Example

Re:Why you should learn just a little Awk - A Tutorial by Ex... by burgerbrain on Sunday August 28, 2011 @05:21PM (#2935010)

In my experience, files have mixed formats far less often than you might suspect. Generally they were kicked out by another script some other bored bloke who just wants to get home wrote himself. If I don't get the results I'm expecting then I'll investigate but the time I save myself by assuming things will work more than offsets that.

Usually the issues I find are things that invalidate the entire file, and indicate a problem further up the stream. In those cases I'm actually glad my script was not robust.

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Re:Why you should learn just a little Awk - A Tutorial by Ex... by berntb on Tuesday August 30, 2011 @05:12AM (#2940665)

Sorry for coming in late, but... that argument can motivate the use of simpler tools (here, awk instead of perl) in any situation. :-)

(I didn't mention "mixed formats", I mentioned the specific problems of e.g. ",":s (and possibly '"':s) in CSV. You will find such characters even in e.g. names, especially if entered by hand/ocr.)

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