Every Linux Geek Needs to Know Sed and Awk. Here’s Why… - The Tech Edvocate

Xeelee, 10 months ago

I'll probably need a few more lines in Python, but I can do everything i want and don't have to deal with the cryptic syntax. I once had to use awk because some extra pigheaded sysadmin refused to install Python on an AIX machine. Glad i don't work there any more.

tal, 10 months ago

Python isn't really a fantastic drop-in replacement for them, IMHO, though there is some overlap.

There are a bunch of Unix tools that let one concisely put a lot of logic into a single command line. They lower the bar to throwing a lot of logic into that single line.

Python's whitespace-sensitive and requires newlines. I guess theoretically you could use a HEREDOC or something, but realistically, if you use Python, you're going to go author a throwaway script and then execute it, which raises the bar to just including it in your command lines.

I think that Perl is probably closer to a middle ground between "application-oriented programming languages" and "single command line use". I think that it'd be reasonable to simply use perl -pie as an alternative to awk especially, though having sed's conciseness is still nice.

rimu, 10 months ago

Wanna see something that makes even Perl look elegant and readable? Check out any sed script. Here's tetris, in sed: https://github.com/uuner/sedtris/blob/master/sedtris.sed

wave_walnut, 10 months ago

Sed is useful to understand linuxmasterrace jokes.

orcrist, 10 months ago

I dunno. I've been running *nix boxes since the 90s and only used sed and awk a handful of times. A handful as in 3-5. It just depends what you do.

blake, 10 months ago

I’m a macOS admin and I use sed fairly frequently in scripts. Can’t say I’ve had many uses for it or awk as a Linux user, however.