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1.8 When to Use 'awk'
=====================

Now that you've seen some of what 'awk' can do, you might wonder how
'awk' could be useful for you.  By using utility programs, advanced
patterns, field separators, arithmetic statements, and other selection
criteria, you can produce much more complex output.  The 'awk' language
is very useful for producing reports from large amounts of raw data,
such as summarizing information from the output of other utility
programs like 'ls'.  (*Note More Complex::.)

   Programs written with 'awk' are usually much smaller than they would
be in other languages.  This makes 'awk' programs easy to compose and
use.  Often, 'awk' programs can be quickly composed at your keyboard,
used once, and thrown away.  Because 'awk' programs are interpreted, you
can avoid the (usually lengthy) compilation part of the typical
edit-compile-test-debug cycle of software development.

   Complex programs have been written in 'awk', including a complete
retargetable assembler for eight-bit microprocessors (*note Glossary::,
for more information), and a microcode assembler for a special-purpose
Prolog computer.  The original 'awk''s capabilities were strained by
tasks of such complexity, but modern versions are more capable.

   If you find yourself writing 'awk' scripts of more than, say, a few
hundred lines, you might consider using a different programming
language.  The shell is good at string and pattern matching; in
addition, it allows powerful use of the system utilities.  Python offers
a nice balance between high-level ease of programming and access to
system facilities.(1)

   ---------- Footnotes ----------

   (1) Other popular scripting languages include Ruby and Perl.