Re: can sql update a non database ascii text file in IFS

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.