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Re: Field Separator: gawk Documentation Issue
From: |
Aharon Robbins |
Subject: |
Re: Field Separator: gawk Documentation Issue |
Date: |
Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:47:32 +0300 |
Greetings. Thank you for your note.
> Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:50:12 +0200
> From: address@hidden
> Subject: Field Separator: gawk Documentation Issue
> To: address@hidden
>
> The documentation states that FS must be either a string of length
> 0 or 1, or a regexp.
>
> The documentation does not say what happens if FS is a string of
> length greater than one.
It is not clear which documentation you mean: the man page or
the texinfo manual?
The texinfo manual makes it very clear that the contents of a string
greater than length one are interpreted as a regular expression, and it
thus is defined.
Other parts of the manual explain why
var = /regexp/
does not assign the regexp to the variable var but does something
else entirely.
> I think it would be clearer if either
>
> - the documentation explains what happens if you set FS to such a string
> (even if it says "undefined behaviour", it would be helpful), or
The texinfo manual does.
> - that the implementation outputs an error message in this case
Neither FS = "string" or FS = /regexp/ are syntactically
invalid, and they both have well-defined semnatics.
The man page does not give all the gory details; the texinfo manual
does.
Thanks,
Arnold
- Re: Field Separator: gawk Documentation Issue,
Aharon Robbins <=