.TH READFILE 3am "Mar 24 2013" "Free Software Foundation" "GNU Awk Extension Modules"

.SH NAME

readfile \- return the entire contents of a file as a string

.SH SYNOPSIS

.ft CW

@load "readfile"

.sp

result = readfile("/some/path")

.sp

.ft R

For making whole files be single records:

.sp

.ft CW

@load "readfile"

.br

BEGIN { PROCINFO["readfile"] = 1 }

.ft R

.SH DESCRIPTION

The

.I readfile

extension adds a single function named

.BR readfile() .

The argument is the name of the file to read.

The return value is a string containing the entire contents of

the requested file.

.PP

Upon error, the function returns the empty string and sets

.BR ERRNO .

.PP

In addition, it adds an input parser that is activated if

.ft CW

PROCINFO["readfile"]

.ft R

exists.

When activated, each input file is returned in its entirety as \f(CW$0\fR.

\f(CWRT\fP is set to the null string.

.\" .SH NOTES

.\" .SH BUGS

.SH EXAMPLE

.ft CW

.nf

@load "readfile"

\&...

contents = readfile("/path/to/file");

if (contents == "" && ERRNO != "") {

    print("problem reading file", ERRNO) > "/dev/stderr"

    ...

}

.fi

.ft R

.SH "SEE ALSO"

.IR "GAWK: Effective AWK Programming" ,

.IR filefuncs (3am),

.IR fnmatch (3am),

.IR fork (3am),

.IR inplace (3am),

.IR ordchr (3am),

.IR readdir (3am),

.IR revoutput (3am),

.IR rwarray (3am),

.IR time (3am).

.SH AUTHOR

Arnold Robbins,

.BR arnold@skeeve.com .

.SH COPYING PERMISSIONS

Copyright \(co 2012, 2013, 2014,

Free Software Foundation, Inc.

.PP

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of

this manual page provided the copyright notice and this permission

notice are preserved on all copies.

.ig

Permission is granted to process this file through troff and print the

results, provided the printed document carries copying permission

notice identical to this one except for the removal of this paragraph

(this paragraph not being relevant to the printed manual page).

..

.PP

Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this

manual page under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that

the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a

permission notice identical to this one.

.PP

Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this

manual page into another language, under the above conditions for

modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in

a translation approved by the Foundation.

.\" vim: set filetype=nroff :