Change in the order of precedence for the redirection operator?

[Tony Leneis]

        It looks like there's been a change in the precedence of the |
redirection operator in gawk between versions 3.1.1 and 3.1.4.  Here's
an awk program that illustrates the change (it requires a Unix like
environment):

gawk 'BEGIN { "echo " "date" | getline;  print }'

When gawk 3.0.3, 3.1.0 and 3.1.1 run the program the output is the word
"date", so getline was reading the output of "echo date".  When gawk
3.1.4 and gawk 3.1.5 run the program the output is the current date, so
getline is presumably reading the output of "date".

        According to the gawk documentation, it looks like 3.0.3, 3.1.0
and 3.1.1 have it right but gawk 3.1.4 and 3.1.5 seems to have increased
the precedence of the | redirection operator.

-Tony


This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee 
and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader 
of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of 
the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this 
communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication 
in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any 
attachments from your system.