Is there still any reason to learn AWK?
I am constantly learning new tools, even old fashioned ones, because I like to use the right solution for the problem.
Nevertheless, I wonder if there is still any reason to learn some of them. awk for example is interesting to me, but for simple text processing, I can use grep, cut, sed, etc. while for complex ones, I'll go for Python.
Now I don't mean that's it's not a powerful and handy tool. But since it takes time and energy to learn a new tool, is it worth it ?
Answer
If you quickly learn the basics of awk, you can indeed do amazing things on the command line.
But the real reason to learn awk is to have an excuse to read the superb book The AWK Programming Language by its authors Aho, Kernighan, and Weinberger. You would think, from the name, that it simply teaches you awk. Actually, that is just the beginning. Launching into the vast array of problems that can be tackled once one is using a concise scripting language that makes string manipulation easy — and awk was one of the first — it proceeds to teach the reader how to implement a database, a parser, an interpreter, and (if memory serves me) a compiler for a small project-specific computer language! If only they had also programmed an example operating system using awk, the book would have been a fairly complete survey introduction to computer science!
Famously clear and concise, like the original C Language book, it also is a wonderful example of friendly technical writing done right. Even the index is a piece of craftsmanship.
Awk? If you know it, you'll use it at the command-line occasionally, but for anything larger you'll feel trapped, unable to access the wider features of your system and the Internet that something like Python provides access to. But the book? You'll always be glad you read it!