Do not use AWK for that. Perl is best suited for that, literally. It was born as a better version of AWK.
AWK is for tools less than 20 lines long. Anything more, use Perl, please.
AWK is for tools less than 20 lines long. Anything more, use Perl, please.
On "big" Unixen (and I am an OpenBSD/Void user), for larger tools, Perl is preferred.
On speed, that doesn't matter. Perl under OpenBSD has a pledge/unveil module, and it's used to write the package manager. Problem solved.
Perl is widely known as a write once read never language for a reason. In that sense I'll grant you awk is no better, but if you are stepping into scripting land you may as well use something generally readable (e.g. python, or just use bash).
From clueless Z-ers with no actual Perl experience, maybe.
While “write once, read never” is hyperbolic, it captures a real issue for Perl compared to many other competitive languages (of which, to be fair, there were far fewer widely supported for the tasks Perl was most often chosen for 20+ years ago.)
That's not to say I don't find some things nice about Perl, and I’d love to be able to spend more time woth Raku which grew out of it.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I though perl code tended to be "higher-level", whereas AWK is optimised C throughout?