Re: [gentoo-user] package.keywords syntax?

["Jorge Peixoto de Morais Neto" <please.no.spam.here@gmail.com>]

>> awk? I assumed it was an obsolete language included for compatibility.
>> People should use Python, Perl, or sed's "s" command. Am I wrong?
>
> Yes. You are indeed wrong.
>
> Python and Perl are humungous interpreters that rival Java for size. Perl is
> in a class of it's own for syntax bloat.
>
> sed is neat but has nowhere near the functionality of awk.
>
> For example, I recently needed to scan a massive text file of 89000+ lines and
> count the number of character on each line and print it out with the line
> number. A bash script took 20 seconds to run. A C script took less than half
> a second. An awk script was marginally *quicker*. Granted, most of that time
> is spent writing to the console, but the text processing must then also be on
> par with C.
>
> awk is not obsolete, it's just been around for a while. It's no more obsoleted
> by perl, python and sed than ls is obsoleted by the existence of gui file
> managers
Nice. I might learn it in the future (there are some urgent duties I
must to before, and then I want to learn C* and Python**. Then I may
study awk)

* Before you ask "what, you don't know C?", I mean to really know C,
that is, read a rigorous book such as "C: A Reference Manual" and be
able to write portable programs with well-defined behavior. Speaking
of well-defined behavior, do you know what happens when you cast a
float to an int, and the float is too big to fit into the int?
** I know basic Python, but I think Python is nice enough for a person
to *really* know it.

-- 
Software is like sex: it is better when it is free - Linus Torvalds