From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

"The Awk Book" presumably refers to the original "The AWK Programming Language" by Aho, Kernighan, and Weinberger, published in 1988.

I've seen the entirety of the original 1988 book scanned and viewable in PDF format online

( I'll refrain from linking it here since I'm uncertain about copyrights of the PDFs, but shouldn't be too hard to locate via google search or somewhere on github )

That said, even the original authors didn't do a particular good job at selling awk's real strengths. If i began my awk journey with that book, I would've jumped ship to perl longlong ago.

thank goodness I didn't step into that sarlacc pit that is perl5, or worse, raku.


The 4Chan Teller

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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

On 01.08.2023 06:11, Kpop 2GM wrote:

"The Awk Book" presumably refers to the original "The AWK
Programming Language" by Aho, Kernighan, and Weinberger, published
in 1988.

That said, even the original authors didn't do a particular good job
at selling awk's real strengths.

When I had first read about the awk command I was curiously looking
for more detailed information than just "it's a language to process
text patterns", so I was quite glad to find that book. It came out
very quickly, only a year after the official release (three years
after the stable version had been developed). The book is very well
written and provides everything you need to understand the concepts
of Awk which are, IMO, the "real strengths" of the Awk language. Of
course it's not a long developed "hacker book" with tips and tricks.
Neither does it has all that fancy stuff that we were publishing or
discussing here in this newsgroup during the past decades. I agree
with you, though, that there wasn't - maybe still isn't - anything
worth on that "hacker-level". But I wouldn't blame that old book or
their authors for this deficiency. After all folks who came up with
advanced ideas likely read that book (and maybe other later sources)
to develop application ideas that the original authors did not have
in mind.

And I also think that the more advanced methods that contribute to
Awk's strengths further would likely have repelled possible users;
many are cryptic and not too easy to understand for newbies. - The
book was, IMHO, exactly what was necessary at that time! - I would
still recommend it to Awk-beginners, even today.[*]

If i began my awk journey with that
book, I would've jumped ship to perl longlong ago.

I had been starting with that book (and a brain that came for free),
and nothing else. (And at times I'm still locking into that book to
look up things.)

With which sources have you "began [your] awk journey", since you
seem to avoid Perl and enjoy Awk on an advanced level?

Janis

[*] With the cutback of the unpleasantly high price of the booklet.
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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

On 8/1/23 9:19 AM, Janis Papanagnou wrote:

On 01.08.2023 06:11, Kpop 2GM wrote:

"The Awk Book" presumably refers to the original "The AWK
Programming Language" by Aho, Kernighan, and Weinberger, published
in 1988.

<snip>

.. I would still recommend it to Awk-beginners, even today.[*]

<snip>> [*] With the cutback of the unpleasantly high price of the booklet.

Speaking of, I came across an announcement of a new edition:

The AWK Programming Language, Second Edition
https://awk.dev/
"The book will be available by the end of September."
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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

On 01.08.2023 22:32, jeorge wrote:

On 8/1/23 9:19 AM, Janis Papanagnou wrote:

On 01.08.2023 06:11, Kpop 2GM wrote:

"The Awk Book" presumably refers to the original "The AWK
Programming Language" by Aho, Kernighan, and Weinberger, published
in 1988.

<snip>

.. I would still recommend it to Awk-beginners, even today.[*]

<snip>> [*] With the cutback of the unpleasantly high price of the booklet.

Speaking of, I came across an announcement of a new edition:

The AWK Programming Language, Second Edition
https://awk.dev/
"The book will be available by the end of September."

It would be interesting to know whether it's just a reprint or
a reworked (updated/enhanced/extended) edition.

Janis

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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

Kpop 2GM <jason.cy.kwan@gmail.com> writes:

"The Awk Book" presumably refers to the original "The AWK Programming
Language" by Aho, Kernighan, and Weinberger, published in 1988.

I've seen the entirety of the original 1988 book scanned and viewable in PDF format online

( I'll refrain from linking it here since I'm uncertain about
copyrights of the PDFs, but shouldn't be too hard to locate via google
search or somewhere on github )

I'm far more certain. The 1988 book is still under copyright, and any
PDF copy that's not explicitly authorized by the publisher is in
violation of that copyright.

(The 1988 AWK book doesn't appear to be available in electronic form.
Amazon has it in paperback for $114.71. The second edition is supposed
to be available 2023-09-22, at a much more reasonable price.)

[...]
--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
Will write code for food.
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */
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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> writes:

On 01.08.2023 22:32, jeorge wrote:

On 8/1/23 9:19 AM, Janis Papanagnou wrote:

On 01.08.2023 06:11, Kpop 2GM wrote:

"The Awk Book" presumably refers to the original "The AWK
Programming Language" by Aho, Kernighan, and Weinberger, published
in 1988.

<snip>

.. I would still recommend it to Awk-beginners, even today.[*]

<snip>> [*] With the cutback of the unpleasantly high price of the booklet. >>
Speaking of, I came across an announcement of a new edition:

The AWK Programming Language, Second Edition
https://awk.dev/
"The book will be available by the end of September."

It would be interesting to know whether it's just a reprint or
a reworked (updated/enhanced/extended) edition.

A mere reprint would not be called the "Second Edition".

From the cited web page:

The first edition was written by Al Aho, Brian Kernighan and Peter
Weinberger in 1988. Awk has evolved since then, there are multiple
implementations, and of course the computing world has changed
enormously. The new edition of the Awk book reflects some of those
changes.
--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
Will write code for food.
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */
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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

On 01.08.2023 23:20, Keith Thompson wrote:

Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> writes:

It would be interesting to know whether it's just a reprint or
a reworked (updated/enhanced/extended) edition.

A mere reprint would not be called the "Second Edition".

Ah, okay, thanks for the hint.[*]

I can only speak from publishers hereabouts; "zweite Auflage" (en.
"second edition") just means a new edition after the first one, and
if there isn't anything mentioned like "überarbeitete" (en. revised), "verbesserte" (en. improved), "durchgesehene" (en. revised version), "korrigierte" (en. corrected), "erweiterte" (en. extended), or many
other possible adjectives declaring the type of the edition, then
it's usually (or even generally?) just a reprint because of new or
significant more customer demands than originally expected.

From the cited web page:
[...]

And thanks for the quote. (I could have looked it up myself but was
too lazy.)

Janis

[*] Though I have also seen in the English domain books that have a
note "rev. ed." adjective (e.g. Bolsky, Korn), so I guess it varies?

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