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Shell Programming and Scripting

awk vs. sed

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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting awk vs. sed
# 1  
Old 08-24-2007
awk vs. sed
These tools seem very similar to me in terms of text/file manipulation.
Can someone explain to me why I would choose one over the other?

TIA,
Jennifer
# 2  
Old 08-24-2007
I don't understand your question. sed is an editor while awk is a programming language. Yes, if you want to change all occurences of "dog" to "cat" in a file, either tool will do. But you also could use c++ or vi if you wanted. It would be hard to find a programming language or an editor that could not handle that "dog" to "cat" task. But still, programming languages and editors seem rather different to me.
# 3  
Old 08-24-2007
Quote:
Originally Posted by Perderabo
sed is an editor while awk is a programming language.
some people may argue that sed is a programming language as its turing complete.
# 4  
Old 08-25-2007
Jen,

it is all what flavor of ice cream you like to have it now Smilie

-ilan

The below seems reasonable...
##sed: a non-interactive text file editor
##awk: a field-oriented pattern processing language with a C-style syntax
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