[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH V5 1/2] configure: sort decoder/encoder/filter/... names in alphabet order

[avih]

> It seems awk is unconditionally required already. However I wanted to
> say that it's a very nice dep to have

While it's possibly nicer than other deps to have, it's still better to use
it IMHO only when it adds some value, like simpler code, better performance,
compliance with some things, etc.

With this patchset, for part 1 I'm not sure I see the added value with awk,
as it looks about the same complexity of the code compared to the shell
version. Performance-wise it's negligible as print_in_columns() is only called
about 5 times (but with thousands of values to process), so as long as the
loop is efficient, the additional awk process per call is barely measurable.

For part 2 the awk version is simpler code, but `log_file()` is called nearly
300 times, mostly with files with less than 5 lines to print. At this case it
does add a performance penalty, especially on systems where a new process is
expensive.