-- $MawkId: README,v 1.6 2019/01/29 02:05:45 tom Exp $
-- vile:txtmode fc=78
mawk -- an implementation of new/posix awk
version 1.3.4
Generic installation instructions are in file INSTALL.
This file gives more specific information.
Send bug reports, comments, questions, etc. to
Thomas E. Dickey <dickey@invisible-island.net>
https://invisible-island.net/mawk/
ftp://ftp.invisible-island.net/mawk/
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Portability:
-----------
This program builds/runs on several POSIX-style platforms.
It has been recently tested for these:
AIX (5.1 and 5.3, using cc and gcc)
Cygwin (1.5.21 on Windows/XP)
FreeBSD (6.0)
HPUX (10.20, 11.00, 11.11 and 11.23, using cc and gcc)
IRIX64 (using cc and gcc)
Linux (several flavors, using gcc and icc)
MinGW/MSYS (on Windows/XP)
OpenBSD (4.1)
Solaris (2.6 to 10, using cc and gcc)
Tru64 (4.0D and 5.1, using cc and gcc)
Options:
-------
The configure script has these application-specific options:
--disable-echo display "compiling" commands
Show "compiling foo.c" rather than the full compiler and
options. Those are clutter useful only to a developer.
Developers focus on compiler warnings anyway.
--enable-warnings test: turn on gcc compiler warnings
This turns on the usual gcc compiler warnings needed to
do useful development. If you happen to be using the
Intel compiler icc, it does the right thing for that.
--with-builtin-regex use mawk's own regular-expressions engine
Normally mawk's configure script uses the built-in regular
expressions. The choice of default is based on where the
greatest lossage occurs. More scripts use gawk's
null-character extension than use POSIX brace expressions. If
your needs are different, build mawk using an external library.
Limitations:
-----------
mawk 1.3.3 was developed to correspond with a POSIX draft. POSIX
continued, and incorporated some of mawk's extensions as features.
The 1.3.4 release fills in the major areas in which POSIX grew past
the mawk 1.3.3 implementation.
mawk's built-in regular expression engine does not yet support brace
expressions, e.g.,
/a{,4}/
Use an external regular expression library if you require brace
expressions. Aside from that, mawk's built-in regular expressions
provide POSIX functionality.
Using an external regular expression library means that mawk cannot
match expressions containing the null character. That is a
nonstandard feature provided by gawk. Using mawk's built-in regular
expressions, there is some support for this feature.
Aside from supporting nulls, using an external regular expression
library is usually advantageous.
The Cygwin math library has some problems (which are also visible in
the gawk port). For instance, its log() function returns Inf
(infinity) for log(-8) rather than NaN (not a number) as all of the
Unix and similar platforms would do.
The MSYS package for regular expressions is unusable as an external
library for mawk because it generates a runtime error when asked to
compile a newline, e.g., "\n". mawk does this during initialization.
The MinGW/MSYS port does not currently support pipes. There is
source-code from the obsolete MS-DOS port which can be reused for this
purpose; however that is not the focus of the 1.3.4 release.
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