Often there are questions of the form "How can I do this with x?" where x is some tool such as bash, sed, awk or perl. Are answers to such question based on another tool than x not welcome, e.g. are awk answers to sed questions not welcome?

In my opinion it is good to show alternatives to show that using x is not the only way of solving the problem. An alternative may even be a better approach. Also if the alternative is less fit it is good to know as e.g. a particular users setup might differ such that only particular tools are available or the alternative is clearer in communicating an algorithm solving the problem.

A reason for raising this question is that my answer to How do I write a sed one-liner to add a character after every third character? received a number of downvotes without comments. It uses an alternative tool to the same result as the sed answers. Should such answers be downvoted or deleted?

Often there are questions of the form "How can I do this with x?" where x is some tool such as bash, sed, awk or perl. Are answers to such question based on another tool than x not welcome, e.g. are awk answers to sed questions not welcome?

In my opinion it is good to show alternatives to show that using x is not the only way of solving the problem. An alternative may even be a better approach. Also if the alternative is less fit it is good to know as e.g. a particular users setup might differ such that only particular tools are available or the alternative is clearer in communicating an algorithm solving the problem.

A reason for raising this question is that my answer to How do I write a sed one-liner to add a character after every third character? received a number of downvotes without comments. It uses an alternative tool to the same result as the sed answers. Should such answers be downvoted or deleted?