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> This is really such a gorgeous piece of code. Clever and poetic.

I suppose that is subjective, but I think this is terrible code.

The fact that someone had to write a lengthy blogpost to figure out what it was doing should be an obvious warning against it.

Write code for readability / comprehensibility.

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I understand the sentiment. As a software engineer I refrain from clever code especially if somebody else has to come and maintain it.

In this case, once you realize how the defaults stack, whoever came up with the one liner indeed has come up with something clever. Also the exercise in understanding the defaults cements the understanding of awk and as others have pointed out enables you to write much cleaner awk.

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