"A series of awks and seds look clever but they are annoying to deal with."

Would the following be annoying for you to deal with?

   #!/bin/sh
   sed 's/#.*//' \
   | sed 's/:/#/g' \
   | cat AMD64 - \
   | ./qhasm-ops \
   | ./qhasm-regs \
   | ./qhasm-fp \
   | ./qhasm-as \
   | sed 's/%32/d/g' \
   | sed 's/%raxd/%eax/g' \
   | sed 's/%rbxd/%ebx/g' \
   | sed 's/%rcxd/%ecx/g' \
   | sed 's/%rdxd/%edx/g' \
   | sed 's/%rsid/%esi/g' \
   | sed 's/%rdid/%edi/g' \
   | sed 's/%rbpd/%ebp/g'

where qhasm-as and qhasm-fp are each awk scripts (222 and 427 lines, respectively).

source: http://cr.yp.to/qhasm/qhasm-20061116.tar.gz qhasm-20061116/qhasm-amd64