Replacing AWK with Python in GCC? [LWN.net]

Replacing AWK with Python in GCC?

Posted Jul 25, 2018 21:39 UTC (Wed) by xorbe (guest, #3165)
In reply to: Replacing AWK with Python in GCC? by nirbheek
Parent article: Replacing AWK with Python in GCC?

I don't think anyone is denying that awk is unfavorable or difficult. It's the complication of adding dependencies to the gcc build flow, it's a valid concern. If only there were light weight scripting languages that didn't inevitably implement every feature request. Sort of like a usable awk.

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Replacing AWK with Python in GCC?

Posted Jul 25, 2018 23:13 UTC (Wed) by jhoblitt (subscriber, #77733) [Link] (2 responses)

Isn't that essentially what lua is?

Lua

Posted Jul 26, 2018 4:26 UTC (Thu) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (1 responses)

Yes - the drawbacks being as expected: much smaller community/number of people understanding it and generally smaller "ecosystem" of tools like debuggers, editors,... You can't have your cake and eat it.

Plus "light-weight" is intuitively not one of the top requirements when gcc is concerned... is it?

Now compared to awk (as opposed to Python) I suspect lua would win on practically every possible metric :-)

Lua

Posted Jul 26, 2018 6:52 UTC (Thu) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]

much smaller community/number of people understanding it and generally smaller "ecosystem" of tools like debuggers, editors,.

On the other hand, Lua is very readable and easy to learn. Rather like Python in that respect.

Plus "light-weight" is intuitively not one of the top requirements when gcc is concerned... is it?

Its implementation is so small that you could include it with GCC sources without growing them with any significant percentage!