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Comment by funkymike | Hacker News Reader

  if (/some-pattern/) { ...

This isn't really unique when you consider perl.

  while (<>) {
    if (/pattern/) {

This does the same. Awk simply has the implicit loop.

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Yes, I think Perl based that on Awk, but then those are the only 2 languages I know that support something like that. That's still very unique. On the implicit loop, along with Ruby, they're the only 3 languages I know that support something like that. That's also pretty unique, and Awk is the only one that has the implicit loop as a requirement.

The implicit loop is uncommon among general-purpose langauges, but very common among filtering-centric languages like awk and grep and sed. For a more recent example, see jq. perl 5 may be close to the only mainstream general-purpose language to have embraced that paradigm though.

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