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Re: XSLT versus AWK

• From: Shlomi Fish <shlomif@shlomifish.org>
• To: Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org>
• Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2022 03:41:02 +0300

Hi Roger!

On Sun, 31 Jul 2022 11:22:34 +0000
Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org> wrote:

> Hi Folks,
> XSLT is a programming language specifically designed for processing textual
> data that is formatted as XML. AWK is a programming language specifically
> designed for processing textual data that is formatted as records containing
> fields. Interestingly, I have observed that the records/fields format is the
> one used for input and output by most UNIX tools. XSLT and AWK are mature
> programming languages. XSLT was created roughly 24 years ago at the W3C. AWK
> was created roughly 45 years ago at Bell Labs by Alfred Aho, Peter
> Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan (the name AWK comes from their last names).
> XSLT and AWK substantially reduce -- relative to other programming languages
> -- the amount of code, time, and effort needed to process their respective
> data formats. A developer will be far more productive writing an XSLT program
> to process XML-formatted data than if he were to write the program in some
> other programming language. A developer will be far more productive writing
> an AWK program to process records-and-fields-formatted data than if he were
> to write the program in some other programming language. XSLT and AWK are
> complimentary. An XSLT program can convert an XML document into a document
> containing records and fields. An AWK program can convert a document
> consisting of records and fields into an XML document. In fact, just
> yesterday I did that very thing -- I wrote an AWK program to convert to XML a
> huge document containing records with tab-delimited fields, where the first
> record contained column headers. See my simple, short AWK program below
> (note: I am an AWK newbie, so there are likely better ways to write the
> program). Lesson Learned: Use the right programming language for the right
> data format. /Roger convert2xml.awk BEGIN   {  # field separator is tab (x09)
> # record separator is CRLF (\r\n) FS = "\t" RS = "\r\n" print "<Airport>" }
> NR==1   {  # get column header names, store in an array for (i=1; i<=NF; i++)
> header[i] = $i; } NR!=1   {  # create a <Row>...</Row> element for the line #
> surround field $i with a start/end tag named header[i] print "<Row>" for
> (i=1; i<=NF; i++) print "<" header[i] ">" $i "</" header[i] ">" print
> "</Row>" } END       { print "</Airport>" }

Re AWK vs. Perl 5 / python 3 / etc see:

https://shlomifish.livejournal.com/1991.html

https://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/resources/text-processing-tools/


-- 

Shlomi Fish       https://www.shlomifish.org/
https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/Can-I-SCO-Now/ - “Can I SCO Now?”

Becky: My mother’s Jewish and I’m kind of a spoiled Jewish American Princess.
    — https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Buffy/A-Few-Good-Slayers/

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