gawk wasn't around (nor was most of the GNU project). Awk was V7 Awk, fairly limited compared to a lot of what's in SysV Awk these days.

I've occasionally pondered whether Larry would have created Perl if gawk was around. I usually conclude (although I hadn't asked him) that Perl might not have been created; Larry would have taken the "lazy" approach, since gawk could accomplish what Larry initially needed Perl to do. Here's to timing!

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker