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GNU Info (gawkinet.info)Some Applications and TechniquesSome Applications and Techniques ******************************** In this major node, we look at a number of self-contained scripts, with an emphasis on concise networking. Along the way, we work towards creating building blocks that encapsulate often needed functions of the networking world, show new techniques that broaden the scope of problems that can be solved with `gawk', and explore leading edge technology that may shape the future of networking. We often refer to the site-independent core of the server that we built in Note: A Simple Web Server. When building new and non-trivial servers, we always copy this building block and append new instances of the two functions `SetUpServer' and `HandleGET'. This makes a lot of sense, since this scheme of event-driven execution provides `gawk' with an interface to the most widely accepted standard for GUIs: the web browser. Now, `gawk' can even rival Tcl/Tk. Tcl and `gawk' have much in common. Both are simple scripting languages that allow us to quickly solve problems with short programs. But Tcl has Tk on top of it and `gawk' had nothing comparable up to now. While Tcl needs a large and ever changing library (Tk, which was bound to the X Window System until recently), `gawk' needs just the networking interface and some kind of browser on the client's side. Besides better portability, the most important advantage of this approach (embracing well-established standards such HTTP and HTML) is that _we do not need to change the language_. We let others do the work of fighting over protocols and standards. We can use HTML, JavaScript, VRML, or whatever else comes along to do our work.
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