using awk with records that have over 100 fields

[WU SHI-KUEI]

In article <1991Jan02.133911.24428 at convex.com> tchrist at convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) writes:
.....quoting my posting, which quoted his posting, and then continues....
>While for this particular application, it may well be that this solution
>suffices, there remain all kinds of internal limits you're going to run into
>with awk.......
>
>Although perl isn't really new anymore, it's still generally perceived to
>be so, and the resistance to new, useful tools in the community is so high
>that some people will insist on shooting themselves in the foot using old,
>limited (and even brain-damaged) software for years in the future.....
......
>While the desire to embrace better
>technology may be somewhat higher amongst computer users than in the
>general populace, there will always be some who wish to live (if you can
>call that living) in a totally static environment where nothing ever
>changes, where no improvement is ever radically different from previous
>practice, and where the JCL scripts from 25 years ago still function.
........
>
Different problems are often best solved by employing
>different tools, even if perl is the Swiss army chainsaw of UNIX.  

Has it ever struck you that perl scripts and JCL code are painfully similar
precisely because perl is a Swiss army chainsaw?