Gawk for Windows 3.1.6-1

GAWK(1) Utility Commands GAWK(1) NAME gawk - pattern scanning and processing language SYNOPSIS gawk [ POSIX or GNU style options ] -f program-file [ -- ] file ... gawk [ POSIX or GNU style options ] [ -- ] program-text file ... pgawk [ POSIX or GNU style options ] -f program-file [ -- ] file ... pgawk [ POSIX or GNU style options ] [ -- ] program-text file ... DESCRIPTION Gawk is the GNU Project's implementation of the AWK pro- gramming language. It conforms to the definition of the language in the POSIX 1003.1 Standard. This version in turn is based on the description in The AWK Programming Language, by Aho, Kernighan, and Weinberger, with the additional features found in the System V Release 4 ver- sion of UNIX awk. Gawk also provides more recent Bell Laboratories awk extensions, and a number of GNU-spe- cific extensions. Pgawk is the profiling version of gawk. It is identical in every way to gawk, except that programs run more slowly, and it automatically produces an execution pro- file in the file awkprof.out when done. See the --pro- file option, below. The command line consists of options to gawk itself, the AWK program text (if not supplied via the -f or --file options), and values to be made available in the ARGC and ARGV pre-defined AWK variables. OPTION FORMAT Gawk options may be either traditional POSIX one letter options, or GNU-style long options. POSIX options start with a single "-", while long options start with "--". Long options are provided for both GNU-specific features and for POSIX-mandated features. Following the POSIX standard, gawk-specific options are supplied via arguments to the -W option. Multiple -W options may be supplied Each -W option has a correspond- ing long option, as detailed below. Arguments to long options are either joined with the option by an = sign, with no intervening spaces, or they may be provided in the next command line argument. Long options may be abbreviated, as long as the abbreviation remains unique. OPTIONS Gawk accepts the following options, listed by frequency. -F fs --field-separator fs Use fs for the input field separator (the value of the FS predefined variable). -v var=val --assign var=val Assign the value val to the variable var, before execution of the program begins. Such variable values are available to the BEGIN block of an AWK program. -f program-file --file program-file Read the AWK program source from the file pro- gram-file, instead of from the first command line argument. Multiple -f (or --file) options may be used. -mf NNN -mr NNN Set various memory limits to the value NNN. The f flag sets the maximum number of fields, and the r flag sets the maximum record size. These two flags and the -m option are from an earlier ver- sion of the Bell Laboratories research version of UNIX awk. They are ignored by gawk, since gawk has no pre-defined limits. -W compat -W traditional --compat --traditional Run in compatibility mode. In compatibility mode, gawk behaves identically to UNIX awk; none of the GNU-specific extensions are recognized. The use of --traditional is preferred over the other forms of this option. See GNU EXTENSIONS, below, for more information. -W copyleft -W copyright --copyleft --copyright Print the short version of the GNU copyright information message on the standard output and exit successfully. -W dump-variables[=file] --dump-variables[=file] Print a sorted list of global variables, their types and final values to file. If no file is provided, gawk uses a file named awkvars.out in the current directory. Having a list of all the global variables is a good way to look for typographical errors in your programs. You would also use this option if you have a large program with a lot of functions, and you want to be sure that your functions don't inadvertently use global variables that you meant to be local. (This is a particularly easy mis- take to make with simple variable names like i, j, and so on.) -W exec file --exec file Similar to -f, however, this is option is the last one processed. This should be used with #! scripts, particularly for CGI applications, to avoid passing in options or source code (!) on the command line from a URL. This option dis- ables command-line variable assignments. -W gen-po --gen-po Scan and parse the AWK program, and generate a GNU .po format file on standard output with entries for all localizable strings in the pro- gram. The program itself is not executed. See the GNU gettext distribution for more information on .po files. -W help -W usage --help --usage Print a relatively short summary of the available options on the standard output. (Per the GNU Coding Standards, these options cause an immedi- ate, successful exit.) -W lint[=value] --lint[=value] Provide warnings about constructs that are dubi- ous or non-portable to other AWK implementations. With an optional argument of fatal, lint warnings become fatal errors. This may be drastic, but its use will certainly encourage the development of cleaner AWK programs. With an optional argu- ment of invalid, only warnings about things that are actually invalid are issued. (This is not fully implemented yet.) -W lint-old --lint-old Provide warnings about constructs that are not portable to the original version of Unix awk. -W non-decimal-data --non-decimal-data Recognize octal and hexadecimal values in input data. Use this option with great caution! -W posix --posix This turns on compatibility mode, with the fol- lowing additional restrictions: · \x escape sequences are not recognized. · Only space and tab act as field separators when FS is set to a single space, newline does not. · You cannot continue lines after ? and :. · The synonym func for the keyword function is not recognized. · The operators ** and **= cannot be used in place of ^ and ^=. · The fflush() function is not available. -W profile[=prof_file] --profile[=prof_file] Send profiling data to prof_file. The default is awkprof.out. When run with gawk, the profile is just a "pretty printed" version of the program.