The other day, after a discussion online, we came to the conclusion that using awk+sed+tr could replace much of the development that requires a database. However, using SQLite to have a SQL syntax isn’t a bad idea either. What do you think?

@andros@twtxt.andros.dev I’m not entirely sure what this means:

development that requires a database

Obviously I wasn’t in the discussion so I feel like I’m missing some context here 🤔

@andros@twtxt.andros.dev If something fits in a CSV file, it typically doesn’t require a database. I agree with that. Depending on the application, more complicated queries might benefit from a database, though. I don’t know awk very well, but I could imagine that grep, sed and cut reach their CSV processing limits rather quickly when you have to deal with escaped (multiline) fields.

I only very rarely have to deal with CSV files or databases in my day to day life. Maybe, these classic Unix tools offer some tricks I’m not aware of. When I have some more complicated CSV input, I generally reach for Python.