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I wouldn't say it's a non-problem, but I agree that there is a certain elegance to line-oriented text processing. It's the same design problem as choosing a data structure; sometimes you can get by with a list, but some problems benefit from non-linear data structures.

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Problem is not xml, json or any other non linear data structure. It's trying to use shell to manipulate data that it's not intended to.

Shell will always have problems with handling bloated/overheaded data structures. In these situations using intermediary higher level languages would help.

PS: I'm sorry my first post is unintentionally against new rule. I just realized.

what new rule?

http://blog.ycombinator.com/new-hacker-news-guideline

I would say its a non-problem. It's not hard at all to grab columns using awk, do replace using sed and find using grep. Programs that output plain structured text are simple and versatile.

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