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README:

This is GNU Awk 2.11 Beta. It should be upwardly compatible with the
System V Release 4 awk.

This release is essentially a bug fix release.  The files have been
renamed and code moved around to organize things by function.  Gawk should
also be somewhat faster now.  More care has been given towards portability
across different Unix systems.  See the installation instructions, below.

Known problems are given in the PROBLEMS file.  Work to be done is
described briefly in the FUTURES file.

The gawk.texinfo included in this release has been revised; it should
be in sync with what the code does.  The man page should also be accurate,
but no promises there.

CHANGES FROM 2.10

User visible changes:
	Compatibility mode is now obtained via new -c option.
	The new ANSI \a and \x escapes are now a standard part of gawk
		as Unix nawk has picked them up.
	The new tolower() and toupper() functions are also standard.
	A new undocumented option, -nostalgia, has been added.
	Command line options have changed somewhat from 2.10.
		-v	is now	-V
		-V	is now	-C
		new -v for doing variable assignments before the BEGIN block.
		new -c for compatibility mode.
		new -a for awk style regexps (default)
		new -e for egrep style regexps, per the POSIX draft spec.
	Some more formats have been added to printf, ala nawk and ANSI C.

Other changes (the hard stuff):
	All known bugs fixed.
	Still more memory leaks plugged.
	Lots of changes to improve performance and portability.

PC users take note!  PC support is not provided in this release as we
	could not get anyone to do it; the person who did it for 2.10 lost
	his network connectivity.  It may be provided later either by
	us or by him.  The stuff in pc.d is from 2.10; anyone who cares
	to make it work for 2.11 under MS-DOS is welcome to do so and
	to feed the changes back to us.

INSTALLATION:

The Makefile will need some tailoring.  Currently it is set up for
a Sun running SunOS 4.x and gcc.  The changes to make in the Makefile are
commented and should be obvious.  Starting with 2.11, our intent has been
to make the code conform to standards (ANSI, POSIX, SVID, in that order)
whenever possible, and to not penalize standard conforming systems.
We have included substitute versions of routines not universally available.
Simply add the appropriate define for the missing feature(s) on your system.

If you have 4.2 or 4.3 BSD, you should add -DTMPNAM_MISSING since the
version of tmpnam on these systems won't accept a NULL pointer.
This does not apply to 4.3-tahoe or the S5R[23] systems I have access to.
You need this if gawk core dumps on something simple like 'BEGIN {print "hi"}'.

If you have neither bison nor yacc, use the awk.tab.c file here.  It was
generated with bison, and should have no AT&T code in it.  (Note that
modifying awk.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 an MS-DOS system, use the stuff in pc.d.
(But see the note above.)

PRINTING THE MANUAL

The 'support' directory contains texinfo.tex 2.1, which will be necessary
for printing the manual, and the texindex.c program from the emacs distribution
which is also necessary.  See the makefile for the steps needed to get a
DVI file from the manual.

CAVEATS

The existence of a patchlevel.h file does *N*O*T* imply a commitment on
our part to issue bug fixes or patches.  It is there in case we should
decide to do so.

BUG REPORTS AND FIXES:

Please coordinate changes through David Trueman and/or Arnold Robbins.

David Trueman
Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Computing Science,
Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

UUCP		{uunet utai watmath}!dalcs!david
INTERNET	david@cs.dal.ca

Arnold Robbins
Emory University Computing Center
Emory University, Atlanta, GA, 30322, USA

INTERNET:	arnold@emoryu1.cc.emory.edu
UUCP:		{ gatech, mtxinu }!emoryu1!arnold
BITNET:		arnold@emoryu1

If you can't contact either of us, try Jay Fenlason, hack@prep.ai.mit.edu
AKA mit-eddie!prep!hack.  During odd hours he can sometimes be reached at
(617) 253-8975, which is an MIT phone in the middle of the corridor, so don't
be suprised if someone wierd answers, or if the person on the other end has
never heard of him.  (Direct them to the microvax about 10 feet to their left.)

MS-DOS SUPPORT

(This section is now outdated, see above.)

Support for MSC 5.1 was supplied by Conrad Kwok and Scott Garfinkle.
Scott is the contact person if you have problems with the MS-DOS version,
uunet!cos!stubby!seg.  (NOTE! This is a new address.) Of course, if it's
a generic bug, we want to hear about it too, but if it isn't reproducible
under Unix, we won't be as interested.
DataMuseum.dk

DKUUG/EUUG Conference tapes

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