Re: Another request for comments on beginner code

Tim Peters (tim@ksr.com)
Wed, 09 Mar 94 23:32:59 EST

> [jeffrey t]
> ...
> as long as the "loop of input lines" model is roughly met, nawk can't
> be beat, you'll never convince me otherwise;

Who's trying to <grin>?

> ...
> But once you go a little further, gawk becomes a pain real fast ...

Sure does! If all you want is something stronger than the awk family,
you should take a look at Perl. I don't think any "scripting" language
beats Python for complicated projects, but for many simple projects on a
UNIX(tm)-like system, Perl is darned hard to beat (speaking here too as a
former nawk user ... there's almost nothing in nawk that Perl doesn't do
at least a little better).

> I don't think I'll become a class writer just yet ... Although I have
> this nagging temptation to write a good data analysis program using
> Python ...

And waste your hard-won Fortran education <wink>?!

no-language-is-so-vile-it-doesn't-have-at-least-one-good-use-ly y'rs
- tim

Tim Peters tim@ksr.com
not speaking for Kendall Square Research Corp