AWK vs Perl

Overview

Perl

Stacks4.3K

Followers935

Votes575

GitHub Stars2.2K

Forks602

AWK

Stacks639

Followers49

Votes0

GitHub Stars2.1K

Forks181

AWK vs Perl: What are the differences?

Comparison between AWK and Perl

AWK and Perl are both powerful scripting languages that are commonly used for text processing and data manipulation. While they share some similarities, there are key differences between the two that make each one unique.

Syntax: One of the primary differences between AWK and Perl is their syntax. AWK follows a pattern-action paradigm, where patterns and corresponding actions are used to process input. On the other hand, Perl has a more flexible and expressive syntax, allowing for more complex programming constructs.
Regular Expressions: AWK and Perl both have built-in support for regular expressions, allowing for pattern matching and text manipulation. However, Perl's regular expression engine is more powerful and feature-rich compared to AWK, providing additional functionalities like lookaheads, lookbehinds, and advanced modifiers.
Variables and Data Structures: AWK uses predefined variables like $0, $1, $2, etc., to access fields in the input. It also supports associative arrays for data storage. Perl, on the other hand, has a more flexible variable naming system and provides various data structures, including arrays, hashes, and complex data structures.
String Manipulation: While both AWK and Perl can perform string manipulation, Perl excels in this aspect with its extensive string manipulation functions and operators. Perl allows for advanced string operations like substitution, splitting, concatenation, and more, making it highly efficient for text processing tasks.
Modules and Libraries: Perl has a vast library of modules available on CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network), allowing developers to easily extend the functionality of their scripts. AWK lacks a similar ecosystem and generally relies on external shell commands for additional functionality.
Error Handling and Exception Handling: Perl has robust error handling and exception handling mechanisms, including try-catch blocks, die function, and eval function. AWK, on the other hand, has limited error handling capabilities and relies mostly on exit codes and simple error messages.

In summary, AWK and Perl are both powerful scripting languages, but they have significant differences in terms of syntax, regular expressions, variables, string manipulation, module support, and error handling. The choice between AWK and Perl largely depends on the specific requirements of the task at hand and the programmer's familiarity with the language.

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Advice on Perl, AWK

Justin

Open Source Program Manager at Reblaze

Aug 15, 2019

Review

If you have a file (demo.txt) that has 3 columns:

Column-1    Column-2    Column-3
Row-1a      Row-2a      Row-3a         
Row-1b      Row-2b      Row-3b
Row-1c      Row-2c      Row-3c
Row-1d      Row-2d      Row-3d
Row-1e      Row-2e      Row-3e

and you want to only view the first column of the file in your CLI, run the following:

awk {'print $1'} demo.txt

Column-1
Row-1a
Row-1b
Row-1c
Row-1d
Row-1e

If you want to print the second column of demo.txt, just replace $1 with $2

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Comments

Detailed Comparison

Perl	AWK
Perl is a general-purpose programming language originally developed for text manipulation and now used for a wide range of tasks including system administration, web development, network programming, GUI development, and more.	A data-driven scripting language consisting of a set of actions to be taken against streams of textual data – either run directly on files or used as part of a pipeline – for purposes of extracting or transforming text, such as producing formatted reports.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 2.2K	GitHub Stars 2.1K
GitHub Forks 602	GitHub Forks 181
Stacks 4.3K	Stacks 639
Followers 935	Followers 49
Votes 575	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 72 Lots of libraries 66 Open source 61 Text processing 54 Powerful 49 Unix-style Cons 4 Messy $/@/% syntax 3 No exception handling 2 Bad OO support 2 "1;" 2 No OS threads	No community feedback yet
Integrations
No integrations available	GNU Bash Linux macOS Zsh (Z shell)

What are some alternatives to Perl, AWK?

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

Related Comparisons

AWK vs Perl: What are the differences?

Comparison between AWK and Perl

Syntax: One of the primary differences between AWK and Perl is their syntax. AWK follows a pattern-action paradigm, where patterns and corresponding actions are used to process input. On the other hand, Perl has a more flexible and expressive syntax, allowing for more complex programming constructs.
Regular Expressions: AWK and Perl both have built-in support for regular expressions, allowing for pattern matching and text manipulation. However, Perl's regular expression engine is more powerful and feature-rich compared to AWK, providing additional functionalities like lookaheads, lookbehinds, and advanced modifiers.
Variables and Data Structures: AWK uses predefined variables like $0, $1, $2, etc., to access fields in the input. It also supports associative arrays for data storage. Perl, on the other hand, has a more flexible variable naming system and provides various data structures, including arrays, hashes, and complex data structures.
String Manipulation: While both AWK and Perl can perform string manipulation, Perl excels in this aspect with its extensive string manipulation functions and operators. Perl allows for advanced string operations like substitution, splitting, concatenation, and more, making it highly efficient for text processing tasks.
Modules and Libraries: Perl has a vast library of modules available on CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network), allowing developers to easily extend the functionality of their scripts. AWK lacks a similar ecosystem and generally relies on external shell commands for additional functionality.
Error Handling and Exception Handling: Perl has robust error handling and exception handling mechanisms, including try-catch blocks, die function, and eval function. AWK, on the other hand, has limited error handling capabilities and relies mostly on exit codes and simple error messages.

AWK vs Perl

Overview

AWK vs Perl: What are the differences?