Copyright (C) 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015,

  2016, 2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

  Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,

  are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright

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README:

This is GNU Awk 4.2.1. It is upwardly compatible with Brian Kernighan's

version of Unix awk.  It is almost completely compliant with the

2008 POSIX 1003.1 standard for awk. (See the note below about POSIX.)

This is a bug-fix release. See NEWS and ChangeLog for details.

Work to be done is described briefly in the TODO file, which is available

only in the 'master' branch in the Git repo.

Changes in this version are summarized in the NEWS file.

Read the file POSIX.STD for a discussion of issues where the standard

says one thing but gawk does something different.

To format the documentation with TeX, use at least version 2017-09.16

of texinfo.tex. There is a usable copy of texinfo.tex in the doc directory.

You should also use at least version 6.1 of texindex and of makeinfo

from the texinfo-6.1 distribution.

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 don't have Bison, 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 will be difficult, at best.  You might

want to get a copy of Bison from the FSF too.)

The build mechanics depend upon Bison. Also, gawk doesn't work correctly

with some versions of yacc, so just use Bison.

If you have an MS-DOS, MS-Windows, or OS/2 system, use the stuff in the `pc'

directory.  Similarly, there is a separate directory for VMS.

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.  There may be differences based on

installed (or not installed) locales and the quality of multibyte

character support on your system.

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.

Use `make pdf' to get PDF versions of the manuals, 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 is a separate mailing

list at GNU Central.  The advantage to using this address is that bug

reports are archived at GNU Central.

Arnold Robbins

BUG REPORTS AND FIXES, non-Unix systems:

MS-DOS with DJGPP:

	Juan Manuel Guerrero

	juan.guerrero@gmx.de

MS-Windows with MinGW:

	Eli Zaretskii

	eliz@gnu.org

OS/2:

	Andreas Buening

	andreas.buening@nexgo.de

VMS:

	John Malmberg

	wb8tyw@qsl.net

z/OS (OS/390) Contact:

	Daniel Richard G.

	skunk@iSKUNK.ORG

z/OS (OS/390) Maintainer Emeritus:

	Dave Pitts

	dpitts@cozx.com