Re: [bug-gawk] enhancement: fixed-width record

[Manuel Collado]

El 20/09/2019 a las 14:28, jamesfengcao via bug-gawk escribió:
> Dear Sir/Madam,
>    It appears not too complicated to add fixed-width record support. With this 
> support, the GNU awk can be used to handle most cases of binary files.
>
>    One such case is to handling binary files with strings mixed with binary 
> data. Usually these binary data are fixed-width. We can easily split the file 
> to text file with strings and pure binary file using tools like bbe. Using gawk 
> with fixed-width record support, we can easily sort the original mixed binary 
> file.
>
>    In fact, with this enhancement, gawk is automatically extended to be a very 
> powerful tool for binary data processing. In fact, it can handle almost all 
> cases. And the best thing is that it is almost free.

It is not clear to me what are you asking for. Gawk already has 
fixed-width fields support (the FIELDWIDTHS feature). And also the 
ability to identify records by their contents (the FPAT feature).

So please post a sample input data and expected output in order to 
clarify why neither FIELDWIDTHS nor FPAT are enough to process it.

>    Best Regards
>    Jim

Regards.
--
Manuel Collado - http://lml.ls.fi.upm.es/~mcollado