🚀 go-pugleaf

|the current FUTURES file, I simply couldn't believe it.  It read just like
|a treatise on how to recreate Perl!  Doesn't anyone out there realize that
|we've already done all this stuff -- most of it many years ago???

Well, I can't claim to speak for all gawk users, but for me the real
advantage is that I can get useful new features _in a language I
already know_.  I realize that Perl can do everything I need to, but I
don't know Perl, and I do know awk, and it's much easier to make use
of a new feature or two than learn a whole new language.

Yes, Perl did most of these things years ago, and did so because they
were useful features.  Why shouldn't gawk benefit from them as well?
Why did Perl add object-oriented features?  Smalltalk has had them for
AGES, didn't Larry know he was just reinventing the wheel?
(Rhetorical question alert.)

As for sticking with a single language spec (eg. POSIX awk), don't you
believe languages should evolve?  Perl certainly has.