(C) 2003, Tim Maher       1-21       www.TeachMePerl.com
Why Awk Replaced Sed


$ cat N   # : is field separator
Mr. Spongebob:Squarepants:SPONGE
Mr. Squidward:Tentacles:SQUID


$ awk -F':' '{ print $2 ", " $1 }' N
Squarepants, Mr. Spongebob
Tentacles, Mr. Squidward


$ sed 's/^\([^:][^:]*\):\([^:][^:]*\):.*$/\2, \1/' N
Squarepants, Mr. Spongebob
Tentacles, Mr. Squidward

IS THAT sed COMMAND A JOKE?

No, we really used to process fields like that!