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From: Kaz Kylheku <643-408-1753@kylheku.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: a sed question
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2024 21:46:56 -0000 (UTC)
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On 2024-12-24, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Dec 2024 06:20:18 -0600, Ed Morton wrote:
>
>> Is perl a mandatory POSIX tool? No.
>
> Nobody cares.

That is a false. Enough vendors and system integrators care that you
can hardly log into any Linux box that doesn't have some kind of awk.
Even small IoT devices or consumer routers.

(If it doesn't have Awk, it's almost certainly not going to have Perl.)

The BusyBox project, a popular project that provides userland utilities
for small systems packaged into a single executable, has its own BusyBox
Awk, which is how a good many small embedded systems get their Awk.

BusyBox Awk is implemented in one 100,000 character source file
(that probably relies on some BusyBox library infrastructure.)

There is no BuxyBox Perl and likely won't be any time soon.

> POSIX compliance is just a means to an end not an end in 
> itself. Linux pays attention to POSIX where it matters, and ignores it 
> where it doesn’t.

That is true, but one area where it matters is in having Awk on a
system, so that shell scripts which rely on Awk do not break.

> This is one case where it doesn’t.

That is nothing but a statement of your personal preference or wishful
thinking, not reflecting the facts of the world at large: as in,
what is widely deployed out there and can be counted on.

-- 
TXR Programming Language: http://nongnu.org/txr
Cygnal: Cygwin Native Application Library: http://kylheku.com/cygnal
Mastodon: @Kazinator@mstdn.ca