The article discusses a simplified version of the Make utility written in AWK code and featured in “The AWK Programming Language” book by Aho, Weinberger, and Kernighan. The second edition of the book, which includes updates and a new chapter on exploratory data analysis, is set to be released soon. AWK is still considered useful in 2023 for data exploration, especially with the new –csv option. The article presents the Make program in AWK and compares it to a Python version. It highlights the core concepts of outputs, dependencies, and build commands in the Make program.
https://benhoyt.com/writings/awk-make/