- README
This is GNU Awk 3.1.5. It is upwardly compatible with the Bell Labs research version of awk. It is almost completely compliant with the 1993 POSIX 1003.2 standard for awk. (See the note below about POSIX.)
This is a bug fix release. See NEWS and ChangeLog for details.
Work to be done is described briefly in the FUTURES file. Changes in this version are summarized in the NEWS file. Please read the LIMITATIONS file.
Read the file POSIX.STD for a discussion of how the standard says comparisons should be done vs. how they really should be done and how gawk does them.
To format the documentation with TeX, use at least version 2000-10-27.17 of texinfo.tex. There is a usable copy of texinfo.tex in the doc directory.
- INSTALLATION
Check whether there is a system-specific README file for your system under the `README_d' directory. If there's something there that you should have read and didn't, and you bug me about it, I'm going to yell at you.
See the file INSTALL for installation instructions.
If you have neither bison nor yacc, use the awkgram.c file here. It was generated with bison, and has no proprietary code in it. (Note that modifying awkgram.y without bison or yacc will be difficult, at best. You might want to get a copy of bison from the FSF too.)
If you have a Windows32, MS-DOS or OS/2 system, use the stuff in the `pc' directory. Similarly, there is a separate directory for VMS.
Ports for the Atari and Tandem are supplied, but they are unsupported. Thus, their code appears in the `unsupported' directory.
Appendix B of ``GAWK: Effective Awk Programming'' discusses configuration in detail. The configuration process is based on GNU Autoconf and Automake.
After successful compilation, do `make check' to run the test suite. There should be no output from the `cmp' invocations except in the cases where there are small differences in floating point values, and possibly in the case of strftime. Several of the tests ignore errors on purpose; those are not a problem. If there are other differences, please investigate and report the problem.
PRINTING THE MANUAL
The `doc' directory contains a recent version of texinfo.tex, which will be necessary for printing the manual. Use `make dvi' to get a DVI file from the manual. In the `doc' directory, use `make postscript' to get PostScript versions of the manual, the man page, and the reference card.
BUG REPORTS AND FIXES (Un*x systems):
Please coordinate changes through Arnold Robbins. In particular, see the section in the manual on reporting bugs. Note that comp.lang.awk is about the worst place to post a gawk bug report. Please, use the mechanisms outlined in the manual.
Email should be sent to bug-gawk@gnu.org. This address sends mail to Arnold Robbins and the general GNU utilities bug list. The advantage to using this address is that bug reports are archived at GNU Central.
Arnold Robbins
BUG REPORTS AND FIXES, non-Unix systems:
- Amiga
Fred Fish fnf@ninemoons.com
Alpha/Linux:
Michal Jaegermann
michal@gortel.phys.ualberta.ca
- BeOS
Martin Brown mc@whoever.com
MS-DOS:
Scott Deifik
scottd@amgen.com
Darrel Hankerson
hankedr@mail.auburn.edu
MS-Windows:
Juan Grigera
juan@biophnet.unlp.edu.ar
OS/2:
andreas.buening@@nexgo.de
- Tandem
Stephen Davies scldad@sdc.com.au
- VMS
Pat Rankin rankin@pactechdata.com