README:
This is GNU Awk 3.1.0. It is upwardly compatible with the Bell Labs
research version of awk. It is almost completely compliant with the
1993 POSIX 1003.2 standard for awk. (See the note below about POSIX.)
There are lots of new features -- see NEWS and ChangeLog for details.
Work to be done is described briefly in the FUTURES file. Changes in this
version are summarized in the NEWS file. Please read the LIMITATIONS file.
Read the file POSIX.STD for a discussion of how the standard says
comparisons should be done vs. how they really should be done and how
gawk does them.
To format the documentation with TeX, use at least version 2000-10-27.17
of texinfo.tex. There is a usable copy of texinfo.tex in the doc directory.
INSTALLATION:
Check whether there is a system-specific README file for your system under
the `README_d' directory. If there's something there that you should
have read and didn't, and you bug me about it, I'm going to yell at you.
See the file INSTALL for installation instructions.
If you have neither bison nor yacc, use the awkgram.c file here. It was
generated with bison, and has no proprietary code in it. (Note that
modifying awkgram.y without bison or yacc will be difficult, at best.
You might want to get a copy of bison from the FSF too.)
If you have a Win32, MS-DOS or OS/2 system, use the stuff in the `pc'
directory. Similarly, there is a separate directory for VMS.
Ports for the Atari and Tandem are supplied, but they are unsupported.
Thus, their code appears in the `unsupported' directory.
Appendix B of ``GAWK: Effective Awk Programming'' discusses configuration
in detail. The configuration process is based on GNU Autoconf and
Automake.
After successful compilation, do `make check' to run the test suite.
There should be no output from the `cmp' invocations except in the
cases where there are small differences in floating point values, and
possibly in the case of strftime. Several of the tests ignore errors
on purpose; those are not a problem. If there are other differences,
please investigate and report the problem.
PRINTING THE MANUAL
The `doc' directory contains a recent version of texinfo.tex, which will
be necessary for printing the manual. Use `make dvi' to get a DVI file
from the manual. In the `doc' directory, use `make postscript' to get
PostScript versions of the manual, the man page, and the reference card.
BUG REPORTS AND FIXES (Un*x systems):
Please coordinate changes through Arnold Robbins. In particular, see
the section in the manual on reporting bugs. Note that comp.lang.awk
is about the worst place to post a gawk bug report. Please, use the
mechanisms outlined in the manual.
Email should be sent to bug-gawk@gnu.org. This address sends mail to
Arnold Robbins and the general GNU utilities bug list. The advantage
to using this address is that bug reports are archived at GNU Central.
Arnold Robbins
BUG REPORTS AND FIXES, non-Unix systems:
Amiga:
Fred Fish
fnf@ninemoons.com
Alpha/Linux:
Michal Jaegermann
michal@gortel.phys.ualberta.ca
BeOS:
Martin Brown
mc@whoever.com
MS-DOS:
Scott Deifik
scottd@amgen.com
Darrel Hankerson
hankedr@mail.auburn.edu
MS-Windows:
Juan Grigera
juan@biophnet.unlp.edu.ar
OS/2:
Kai Uwe Rommel
rommel@ars.de
Tandem:
Stephen Davies
scldad@sdc.com.au
VMS:
Pat Rankin
rankin@eql.caltech.edu
