> Perl? Wow. Is that better than bash, python or even nodejs? Why write in Perl over these?
It depends on scale.
If you have some quick parsing to do, then awk will get you started quickly, but as you expand your experimentation on what you want to extract/manipulate, it may not be easy to add onto the awk beginnings of your "one liner".
But if you start with awk-like† syntax but invoking it with Perl, then if you find you have to expand, Perl has more elbow room.
The intention is not to 'go big', which those other languages may be better at, but to more easily 'start small'.
† IIRC, Larry Wall wanted a utility that had awk/(s)ed-like syntax for text manipulation, just 'with more'.
It depends on scale.
If you have some quick parsing to do, then awk will get you started quickly, but as you expand your experimentation on what you want to extract/manipulate, it may not be easy to add onto the awk beginnings of your "one liner".
But if you start with awk-like† syntax but invoking it with Perl, then if you find you have to expand, Perl has more elbow room.
The intention is not to 'go big', which those other languages may be better at, but to more easily 'start small'.
† IIRC, Larry Wall wanted a utility that had awk/(s)ed-like syntax for text manipulation, just 'with more'.