In part, as described by the other commenter, because the number of characters needed to type to carry out a simple task is often smaller for awk than for perl. But mostly because I started using awk before Perl existed... so I just keep using it.
I learned AWK before Perl existed and so use it in part because I learned it first and have a codebase in AWK. But I also found, when I tried Perl, that I didn't like it. Perl has some features that AWK doesn't, but AWK is much cleaner. Perl has too many weird bits and relies too much on tricks. After reading the book I tried writing real programs in Perl a couple of times but broke off the effort because it just wasn't to my taste. When I want more than AWK offers in an interpreted language, e.g. more sophisticated data structures, I generally use Tcl or Python.
"A" in "Awk" is for "Aho" (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks, Mr. Aho. Awk has saved my bacon many, many times. I still use it several times a week.
Re: (Score:3)
Out of curiosity, why awk and not perl? More convenient one-lining? Or...etc.
Re: (Score:3)
In part, as described by the other commenter, because the number of characters needed to type to carry out a simple task is often smaller for awk than for perl. But mostly because I started using awk before Perl existed ... so I just keep using it.
Re:"A" in "Awk" is for "Aho" (Score:2)