Advise: Programming Language to Learn

[Chris F.A. Johnson]

On Mon, 9 Apr 2007, Stephen wrote:

> I often need to do utility programs to, for example, extract email addresses 
> from a text file.
>
> I used to use OS/2 REXX and it was great and fast.
>
> What would be a good choice to use on my Linux system?
>
> I know Pascal well, C fair and PHP pretty well.

     There isn't much that cannot be done with shell scripts. If you
     use the command line, you already have some knowledge of the
     shell.

     The shell can do a lot without using any external commands, and
     combined with commands such as awk, sed, grep, etc., most tasks
     are easily handled. For example, to extract email addresses:

FILE=/var/spool/mail/$USER
tr '[ ,><"]' '\n' < "$FILE" | grep '. at .*\.'

-- 
    Chris F.A. Johnson                      <http://cfaj.freeshell.org>
    ========= Do not reply to the From: address; use Reply-To: ========
    Author:
    Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress)
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