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Better AWK?

Page created: 2023-06-07

I love AWK except:

Different implementations have different features. This prevents me from using it. Period.
The built-in line parsing action stops at one level, then you’re doing stupid stuff with for loops over character streams. Why?!

I want AWK’s implicit line parsing to have multiple levels (the first three of which would have default/implicit behavior):

[match] { per line }       <--- what awk does now

[match] { per line
    [match] { per word }
}

[match] { per line
    [match] { per word
        [match] { per char }
    }
}

Just thinking out loud here: I might add string interpolation and implicit variables $l, $w, $c for this behavior.

Then, if I want to print every word inside some square brackets:

{{ print "[$w]" }}

Not sure how that would actually work in practice, but I like it at first blush.