awk question

[Quartz]

>> It's not very much like sh or C syntax (or
>> any other syntax) and new users tend to get really confused.
>
> Hmmm... I don't know, could you provide an example where you
> would say, like, "this is not intuitive" or even "this does
> something totally strange"?

Things I've noticed new users bump into all the time:


Statements must be wrapped in curly braces, ie;
 > awk '{print $1}{print $2}'
I think awk is one of the few languages to do this.


Because of the above, having to type:
 > awk '{print $1}'
instead of just"
 > awk 'print $1'
.. in other words both the quotes and the curly braces are required. For 
most other shell utilities one is enough.


People assume that awk prints string literals like (ba)sh:
 > echo "$1$2$3"
and
 > awk '{print $1$2$3}'
both yield fields with nothing between them. So far so good, right? but:
 > echo "$1,$2,$3"
yields results with commas between them, but:
 > awk '{print $1,$2,$3}'
yields results with spaces. OK, so it's not like sh. Maybe it's like 
Javascript then?
 >  awk '{print $1+","+$2+","+$3}'
... nope, now all they get is a huge list of mostly zeros, because awk 
doesn't overload operators.

(Note: I am not advocating for overloaded operators and I think 
Javascript is a horrible language).



> Yes, this is true, but keep in mind what awk is: a "pattern-directed
> scanning and processing language". If you want higher precision
> math, use system("<math stuff>  | dc") and incorporate the result;
> awk isn't really for math, but integer math is usually fine. :-)

Right, but it's just something that makes people shy away from awk, for 
better or worse.