[Novalug] sed syntax question

[Angelo Bertolli]

James Ewing Cottrell 3rd wrote:
> donjr wrote:
>> On Mon, 2007-03-12 at 02:23 -0400, James Ewing Cottrell 3rd wrote:
>>  
>>> You violated on of Root Boy's Laws: Never Use AWK
>>>     
>>
>> You lost me with this unknown reference to "Root Boy". Who is that?
> I am Root Boy Jim. I used to post a LOT back in the 80s when I was at 
> NBS (now NIST) and the early 90s when I was at UUNET. Google for "Root 
> Boy Jim" *with* the quotes.
>
> My Notoriety has been Permanently Enshrined in Code that has been 
> ported to many languages.
>
>     u_long rbj;    /* r*B+u[j] (not root boy jim) */
>
> AWK lives between SH and Perl in complexity. My point is, use SH for 
> simple things, and use Perl for complex ones. Thus:
>
>     Never Use AWK
>
> AWK has, um, awkward syntax. I always hated it, even before Perl came 
> along.
>
> And don't tell me that Perl isn't always available. If it isn't, Carry 
> It With You. Compile it yourself.
It's not that Perl might not be available (because I don't recall a 
system without it in many years), but that it leads to people using Perl 
modules, and maybe not even realizing it.  At least that's what annoys 
me about Perl:  tracking down all the modules when I find something 
useful that someone else wrote.

-- 
Angelo Bertolli
Please remove my email address from your post when replying
[Tech http://bitfreedom.com | Gaming http://heroesonly.com]