Re: Positioning a new lua distribution

[Gavin Wraith <gavin@...>]

On Thu 27 Feb, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:

> I have one idea. Rather than positioning Lua, LuaCheia or 
> similar project against the above cited scripting languages, 
> it should be positioned against awk.   Awk is small, 
> elegant, widely used and easy to carry around (its just one execut
> able file).  It is aimed at text processing.  
> At the same time awk is showing its age.

Interesting that you should say this. I maintain ports both of
awk and of Lua to Risc OS. As you say, awk shows its age in 
certain aspects, but there are still tasks where it is
quicker to use awk - just. The virtue of awk is the implicit
input and pattern-action syntax, but that can also make it clumsy
in some circumstances. 
 What awk and Lua both have in common, and what goes a long way
towards explaining their charm, is that their authors have
realised that trying to make a language be all things to all
men generally only succeeds in making it a monster. The last
section of the last chapter of A,W & K's "The AWK Programming
language" starts: "AWk is not a solution to every programming
problem, ... ". In the penultimate sentence they say " - any
tool can be pushed beyond its limits - ". It is this modest
and practical approach that I applaud.
 
-- 
Gavin Wraith (gavin@wraith.u-net.com)
Home page: http://www.wraith.u-net.com/