Linguistic computing with UNIX tools

Abstract

This chapter presents an outline of applications to language analysis that open up through the combined use of two simple yet powerful programming languages with particularly short descriptions: sed and awk. We shall demonstrate how these two UNIX1 tools can be used to implement small, useful and customized applications ranging from text-formatting and text-transforming to sophisticated linguistic computing. Thus, the user becomes independent of sometimes bulky software packages which may be difficult to customize for particular purposes. © 2007 Springer-Verlag London Limited.