[JaxPM] RE: "Effective awk Programming, 3rd Edition" Published by O'Reill y

[JONES, WILLIAM C]

On the jacksonville-pm-list; Jax.PM'er "JONES, WILLIAM C" <wcjones at exchange.fccj.org> wrote -

Hmmm, AWK sounds a lot like Perl -- Oh, it is a lot like Perl  :)

(Perl was originally modeled after AWK and SED by Larry Wall...)

Make hard things easy...
-Sneex-  :]

PS - and makes impossible things do-able...


> ----------
> From: 	Denise Olliffe
> Sent: 	Tuesday, June 12, 2001 2:12 PM
> To: 	bill at fccj.org
> Subject: 	"Effective awk Programming, 3rd Edition" Published by
> O'Reilly
> 
> For immediate release
> Review copies available
> Contact: Denise Olliffe
> deniseo at oreilly.com or 707-829-0515 x339
> 
> O'REILLY RELEASES OFFICIAL USER'S GUIDE TO 
> THE awk PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE
> 
> Using the awk language to program is a little like using notepad rather
> than a full-fledged word processing program in that, unencumbered by
> the features and frills you don't need, you are able to focus quickly
> and efficiently on tackling the task at hand.  Sometimes a less complex
> tool is all you need. Yet the awk programming language can be
> surprisingly powerful, too. In "Effective awk Programming," (O'Reilly,
> US $39.95) author Arnold Robbins explains how to perform sophisticated
> text processing and report generation, including powerful regular
> expression matching and text substitution facilities, associative
> arrays, and user-defined functions.
> 
> "It's important to program effectively with whatever language or tools
> you happen to be using," Robbins explains. "Tools should help you get a
> job done, using them isn't an end in and of itself. With that in mind,
> for a certain class of problems, awk's pattern-action programming
> paradigm is very expressive and elegant. Often awk solutions are
> adequate, without the need to turn an awk prototype into a 'production'
> version in C or C++."
> 
> The awk language differs from other programming languages in that awk
> is data-driven rather than procedural. Programs written with awk are
> usually much smaller than they would be in other languages; for
> example, the typical awk program usually amounts to 100 lines of code
> or less. A programmer might quickly compose an awk program at his or
> her terminal, use it once, and throw is away. As Robbins explains in
> his book, awk programs are interpreted, allowing programmers to avoid
> the (usually lengthy) compilation part of the typical
> edit-compile-test-debug cycle of software development.
> 
> There are many variants of awk, including gawk, which is the GNU
> version that currently ships with every GNU/Linux distribution. In
> addition to providing in-depth coverage of the POSIX awk language,
> "Effective awk Programming" also serves as the "official documentation"
> for gawk. Robbins, who was one of the lead developers of gawk,
> currently maintains the gawk language and its documentation.
> 
> "The release of this book coincides with the release of GNU awk 3.1,
> the first major release of gawk in about five years!" says Robbins.
> "There are lots and lots of new features in this release, as well as
> several bug fixes over the last minor release. The most important new
> features have to do with networking, profiling awk programs, and
> internationalizing awk programs. There are other, smaller, new features
> as well."
> 
> In his book, Robbins clearly distinguishes standard awk features from
> the gawk-specified features, points out the "dark corners" of the
> language (areas to watch out for when programming), and devotes two
> entire chapters to example programs. The book also covers:
> 
> --Internationalization of gawk
> --Interfacing to i18n at the awk level
> --Two-way pipes
> --TCP/IP networking via the two-way pipe interface
> --The new PROCINFO array, which provides information about running gawk
> --Profiling and printing awk programs
> --Dynamically adding built-in functions at run time
> 
> As the official gawk user's guide, this book will also be available
> electronically, and can be freely copied and distributed under the
> terms of the Free Software Foundation's Free Documentation License
> (FDL). A portion of the proceeds from sales of this book will go to the
> Free Software Foundation to support further development of free and
> open source software.
> 
> Arnold Robbins is a professional programmer and technical author. He
> has been working with Unix systems since 1980 and with gawk since 1988.
> As a member of the POSIX 1003.2 balloting group, he helped shape the
> POSIX standard for awk. In addition to this book, Arnold is the author
> of "Unix in a Nutshell, Third Edition" and the "sed & awk Pocket
> Reference." He is the coauthor of "sed & awk, Second Edition" and
> "Learning the vi Editor, 6th Edition."
> 
> Chapter 9, "Internationalization with gawk," is available free online at:
> http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/awkprog3/chapter/ch09.html 
> 
> Chapter 10, "Advanced Features of gawk," is available free online at:
> http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/awkprog3/chapter/ch10.html 
> 
> For more information about the book, including Table of Contents,
> index, author bio, and samples, see:
> http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/awkprog3/
> 
> For a cover graphic in jpeg format, go to:
> ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/graphics/book_covers/hi-res/0596000707.jpg
> 
> 
> Effective awk Programming,3rd Edition
> By Arnold Robbins
> ISBN 0-596-00070-7, 421 pages, $39.95 (US)
> order at oreilly.com
> 1-800-998-9938
> http://www.oreilly.com
> 
> # # #
> 
> O'Reilly is a registered trademark of O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. All
> other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
> 
> 

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