> On Sep 29, 2022, at 8:24 PM, Joerg Sonnenberger <jo...@bec.de> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Sep 29, 2022 at 08:39:16PM +1000, Jonathan Gray wrote:
>> wc counts items in files. Finding the longest item indeed sounds
>> like a task better suited to awk.
Doesn’t gnu wc show that tabs have length 8 rather than length 1?
Do the other wc implementations differ?
>
> Finding outliers, means and counting are all parts of the same basic
> class of operations. A good implementation of all of them requires
> constant space and a fixed time per input character. An implementation
> in awk will generally not have that property.
Did you run any benchmarks to check this? I’m not doubting you but just
wondering if there’s a speed difference that matters in practice.
>
> Joerg
>
