× The internal search function is temporarily non-functional. The current search engine is no longer viable and we are researching alternatives.
As a stop gap measure, we are using Google's custom search engine service.
If you know of an easy to use, open source, search engine ... please contact support@midrange.com.



On Mon, Jan 13, 2020 at 8:31 PM Patrik Schindler <poc@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Funny fact: Awk has been compared to ancient RPG versions, because of the
implicit cycle logic. Awk also reads until EOF and does stuff with the
data. :-) I can't recall where I read that, though.

On Mon, Jan 13, 2020 at 9:57 PM Bruce Vining <bruce.vining@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Most likely from UNIX: A History and a Memoir by Kernighan and some
speculation (which includes EOF handling) on what was written/intended.
One reviewer of the book commented "There were some technical surprises. We
always thought AWK was influenced by Snobol, but according to the book, it
borrowed from RPG. We don’t see it, but who are we to argue with the K in
AWK?".

That's a nice find, but it sounds to me as though Patrik heard/read
about the relationship between awk and RPG quite some time ago (which
makes sense, as both languages are quite old), while the book you
mention is quite new (released in October last year, just about 3
months ago).

Indeed, there is a discussion on Wikipedia initiated in 2009 on the
similarity between the languages, and which includes a lengthy comment
by our own JMarkMurphy in 2017:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AIBM_RPG#Awk?

There was also a comment on Hacker News from May 2018, in response to
the 1988 book "The AWK Programming Language":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17146737

For all I know, the idea may also appear in the midrange.com archives.

John Y.

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

This thread ...

Follow-Ups:
Replies:

Follow On AppleNews
Return to Archive home page | Return to MIDRANGE.COM home page

This mailing list archive is Copyright 1997-2024 by midrange.com and David Gibbs as a compilation work. Use of the archive is restricted to research of a business or technical nature. Any other uses are prohibited. Full details are available on our policy page. If you have questions about this, please contact [javascript protected email address].

Operating expenses for this site are earned using the Amazon Associate program and Google Adsense.