I used awk to migrate users from one system to another. I created template scripts for setting up the user in the new system, I dumped the data from the old system, then used awk to process the dump and create scripts for each user in the new system. That was a fun project.
For those who think US Army is above this kind of torture.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse