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From: goer@sophist.uucp (Richard Goerwitz)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: merging 2 files
Keywords: sed awk perl join
Message-ID: <9192@tank.uchicago.edu>
Date: 8 May 90 19:57:51 GMT
References: <757@sagpd1.UUCP> <102007@convex.convex.com> <7@stoat.warwick.ac.uk>
Sender: news@tank.uchicago.edu
Reply-To: goer@sophist.UUCP (Richard Goerwitz)
Organization: University of Chicago
Lines: 47

On converting

><|FooBar			
><|blaTZ
><|GRMblE
><|WhEe

into

><|FooBar	foobar			
><|blaTZ	blatz
><|GRMblE	grmble
><|WhEe	whee

using the Perl script -

><    chop;
><    print $_, " ";
><    y/A-Z/a-z/;
><    print $_, "\n";

Rob McMahon (cudcv@warwick.ac.uk) writes:

>I know perl is wonderful, and I do use it a lot, but I can't help feeling that
>
>	tr '[A-Z]' '[a-z]' < file | lam file -s " " -
>
>is easier (if you have `lam' I suppose, but there's an "if you have `perl'"
>too ...).

If we are into the right-tool-for-the-job game, let me just point out
that Icon will do the same job as well:

procedure main()
  every line := !&input
  do write(line," ",map(line))
end

This'll run about the same speed as the Perl script.

The point is that there is no reason to perversely superimpose string-
processing tasks on a diverse set of utilities, when there exist inter-
nally consistent, fast, elegant (and free) methods for solving these
same problems.

   -Richard L. Goerwitz              goer%sophist@uchicago.bitnet
   goer@sophist.uchicago.edu         rutgers!oddjob!gide!sophist!goer