On Wed, 29 Jun 2022 19:44:15 -0400, Bob Bridges wrote: >I've heard the word "awk", but never been exposed to it. I had the >impression, though, that I've heard of it in the context of Unix; am I >mistaken? > UNIX, yes. Which means it's readily available on z/OS, Mac OS, and Linux. Similar to Rexx in expressive power.
Both have some useful form of associative arrays. Pedants will argue over the precise definition. Awk allows expressions in array subscripts. Awk has two datatypes: string and number. I've stumbled over the distinction on (very few) occasions. Rexx has arbitrary precision arithmetic; awk hasn't. But that precludes Rexx's having elementary arithmetic functions which awk has. Neither has lexical scoping. Each has a clumsy alternative. Regular expressions are intrinsic to awk; absent from Rexx which has PARSE as a poor substitute. Awk is "data driven". Rexx could do very similar with a simple loop. >Remember, the topic of the moment was whether there's any use for REXX >~outside~ TSO. This was on a Windows system; I'm guessing awk wouldn't be one >of the available tools (even if I knew anything about it, I mean). > Cygwin? The only thing that made Windows tolerable for me. Ubuntu basn? We'll undoubtedly hear from people who loathe each. Sometimes the same people. -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
