Use Perl (was Re: Is there an AWK debugger?)

[Randal Schwartz]

In article <8372 at batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>, lacey at batcomputer (John Lacey) writes:
| I'm developing an application using AWK.  The programs involved
| are getting to be fairly substantial (several hundred lines, up to
| 6 or 7 files being read and written to), and I was wondering if
| anyone has ever seen, heard of, written, or used an AWK debugger.
| 
| I am using both gawk 2.10 and the original AWK (1977).
| 
| What does a debugger look like for an interpreted language?  Is it
| possible to add one on to an existing interpreter, or am I going to
| have to hack at gawk in order to get what I want?
| 
| I know, a lot of you are going to say ``Why are you using AWK?''
| Because it's a convenient development language, and in this case
| I can make good use of the pattern matching.  If I need a faster
| application when I finish, I will recode it in C.

Several hundred lines?  Six or seven files?

One simple piece of advice:

GET PERL.

You can even convert your awk script (if it didn't do anything
nasty) directly into Perl.

And yes, there's a debugger :-)

It's also free.  See comp.sources.unix and/or send mail to
"Larry Wall" <lwall at jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov> to get it.

Just another Perl fanatic,
-- 
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