AWK

[Guy Harris]

> I've been enjoying Jon Bentley's "Programming Pearls" column in the
> CACM.  However, it appears the AWK he's using at Murray Hill is a lot
> fancier than the one that comes with 4.2BSD.  Does the AWK that
> includes functions come with System V?

The "awk" that comes with System V Release 1 is a version marginally
older(!) than the 4.2BSD one - there are a couple of *extremely* minor
things in the 4.2 one not in the S5R1 one.  The 4.2 "awk" also has some
fixes which keep it from trying to dereference NULL pointers.  The "awk"
that comes with System V Release 2 is later than the 4.2 one, and has all
the aforementioned features, but, alas, not the bug fixes.  (Those may show
up later, since they broke the 68000 and possibly the 80286 microports,
assuming AT&T folds all bug fixes from the microports back into the
mainstream UNIX.)  The S5R2 "awk" is also significantly faster than the
older ones.  However, it doesn't have any major new features.

What version Bentley is running, I don't know, but I suspect it's an
in-house version at AT&T BL research.

	Guy Harris