Can Lua replace awk?

[Dirk Laurie <dpl@...>]

On Fri, Mar 04, 2011 at 10:14:28AM +0200, steve donovan wrote:
> 
> Thanks to my old friend awk, and a little editorial discretion:
> 
I wondered why your new friend lua could not also do it.

E.g. to make a list of packages whose names start with liblua5.1
you can paste the following into a bash shell:

aptitude search liblua5.1 | 
 lua -e "print(table.concat((
 function () t={}; 
 for i in io.lines() do 
 table.insert(t,string.match(i,'liblua%S*'))
 end return t end)(),' '))"

Dirk