Awk

Certainly, awk might not be as powerful as many other tools designed with similar goals. But it has the big advantage that it is possible write in a really short time small programs which are fully tailored to our needs. AWK is very appropriate for the purposes for which it was build: Read data line by line and act upon the strings and patterns in the lines.

BASH

BASH (Bourne Again Shell) with its set of commands is powerful way of getting things done, especially when BASH is used in scripts or programs.

Perl

Perl is an interpreted programing language known for its power and flexibility. It combines the familiar syntax of C, C++, sed, awk, grep, sh, and csh into a tool that that is more powerful than the separate pieces used together.

shelldorado.com

Heiner's Shelldorado - your UNIX shell scripting resource. Lots of links for scripting pages in many languages.