Thank you for your feedback. If I interpret you correctly I think you may have misunderstood the spirit of my earlier comment.

I was replying to crvs when he mentioned the use of shebangs in the context of writing awk scripts. I took him to mean that this particular episode had helped to provide an insight which assisted with his understanding.

In my reply I pointed to the series that b-yeezi and I had done on awk where we'd tried to introduce people to this tool and had made many many references to the gawk manual along the way of course.

There is no contest with the gawk manual itself, if that is what you were implying. The manual is obviously the most comprehensive and definitive resource on the utility and the language. The resource which b-yeezi and I had tried to provide was simply a way into concepts which may have been daunting and somewhat inaccessible to some.

Our role was one of supplementing the manual itself, not of superseding it in any way.

I hope this clarifies any misunderstanding there may have been.