Sure, is egrep a|egrep b| egrep c more intuitive than awk '/a/ && /b/ && /c/'. sure, until you need to have more control over the pipe, in which case, you already forked to awk. so why not go all the way and keep the operation as an awk expression? The great thing about it is, the more you use a tool, the faster you are at using it.
