Linux Journal: Quick and Dirty Data Extraction in AWK

"Many years ago, probably close to 20, a regular point was made on the comp Usenet newsgroups about using the minimum tool to get the job done. That is, someone would ask for a quick and dirty way to do something. The followups often included a C solution followed by an AWK solution followed by a sed solution and so on.

"Today, I still try to use this philosophy when addressing a problem. In this particular case, explained below, I picked AWK. If any of you old-timers are reading this article, though, I expect you will come up with a sed-based solution..."

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• Linux.com: CLI Magic: Who Sed that?(Jan 25, 2005)
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• IBM developerWorks: Awk by example, Part 2 - Records, loops, and arrays(Jan 14, 2001)
• IBM developerWorks: Awk by example, Part 1 - An intro to the great language with the strange name(Jan 14, 2001)