There is some negative sentiment for awk and sed.
Yes, perl was designed to replace those 'languages'. It does a horrible job of it.
I can expect sh, awk and sed to exist, to not have some wonky mismatched library problem, to start quickly, and to behave exactly as they did a few decades ago. Two decades from now the same will likely be true.
I'm not going to write the Great American Novel errrm Program in those languages, but they are my first choice when I want tools that continue to work without being mucked with each time I try to run it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
