Love the ternary operator in gawk. Here's some extreme examples, from a text formatter I wrote over 20 years ago. It is over 6,000 lines of awk, and I haven't used it in over 15 years.
Note: These lines should be split, but many of them are not. How do I do that? I read formatdoc, but that did not help.
; # see where text starts;
mut = ((substr($0, lf1-length(lf1str), length(lf1str)) != lf1str) \
? 1 \
: ((substr($0, lf1, 1) == " " ) \
? (lf1+1) \
: lf1) \
); # start of string;
---------------------------
# return file and line number with optional text;
function filineg(ffilename, ffilerec, fltext)
{
; # first version always gives a line number, second does not for line 1;
return (ffilename \
(ffilerec == "" ? "" : (":" ffilerec)) \
((fltext == "") \
? "" \
: (" in \"" fltext "\"") \
));
}
------------------------------------
outstr[2] = (head \
( (lnum > 1) \
? (substr(bigsep, 2, lnum-1) " ") \
: (substr(spaces, 1, lnum)) \
) \
(header2==""?" ":header2) null("output space if null - 5-20-98") \
substr(bigsep, 1, \
ltocout-lhead-lpn-1 \
-(lheader-lheadchop)-lnum \
-((null_loc > 0) \
? lnullstring \
: 0 \
) \
) " " pn); # parens make it line up;
----------------------
function telldepth(deptxt, dep1, dep2)
{
; # change depth from dep1 to dep2;
; # good luck figuring this out in a month!;
; # tell how depth changes;
recnumprint("{" deptxt " " \
((dep1=="") \
? ((dep2=="") \
? ("leaves depth as is") \
: ("sets depth " dep2)\
) \
: ("changes depth " dep1 " to " dep2) \
) " in " filine() "}");
}