Release Digest: GNU, July 9, 2003

Gawk 3.1.3

Greetings all.

Patch #3 to GNU Awk (gawk) 3.1 is now available. Gawk is the GNU
project’s version of the AWK programming language.

The following files may be retrieved from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gawk:

This is a bug fix release. The relevant part of the NEWS file is
reproduced below.

A .bz2 file is available for the full distribution to save
download time.

The -doc.tar.gz file contains the TeX dvi and “dribble” files,
while the -doc.ps.tar.gz file contains PostScript versions of the
manuals, the man page, and the reference card.

The .diff file is a SHELL SCRIPT that should be executed with
`sh’. It sets things up correctly both before and after applying
the embedded context diff. Note also that if you use the .diff file
to upgrade, you need to have the version of makeinfo from Texinfo
4.5 in order to rebuild the *.info files.

Bug reports should be sent to [email protected].

Enjoy!

Arnold Robbins
[email protected]

Changes from 3.1.2 to 3.1.3

1. Gawk now follows POSIX in handling of local numeric formats for
   input, output and number/string conversions.
2. Multibyte detection improved. See README_d/README.multibyte for
   more info about multibyte locales.
3. Handling of `close’ made more POSIX-compliant for
   POSIXLY_CORRECT, see the documentation.
4. The record reading code was redone, again. This time it’s much
   better. Really!
5. For RS = “n” and RS = “”, gawk now only sets RT when it has
   changed. This provides considerable performance improvement.
6. `match’ now sets all the subscripts in the third argument array
   correctly, even if not all subexpressions matched.
7. Updated to Automake 1.7.5. configure.in renamed
   configure.ac.
8. C-style switch statements are available, but must be enabled at
   compile time via `configure –enable-switch’. For 3.2 they’ll be
   enabled by default. Thanks to Michael Benzinger for the initial
   code.
9. %c now always prints no more than one character, whatever
   precision is provided.
10. strtonum(<number>) now works again.
11. Gawk is now much better about scalar/array typing of global
    uninitiailzed variables passed as parameters. Once the parameter is
    then used one way or the other, the global var’s type is adjusted
    accordingly. Thanks to Stepan Kasal for the original (considerable)
    changes.
12. Dynamic function loading under Windows32 should now be
    possible. See README_d/README.pcdynamic. Thanks to Patrick T.J.
    McPhee for the changes.
13. Updated to gettext 0.12.1.
14. Gawk now follows historical practice and POSIX for the return
    value of `rand’: It’s now 0 <= N < 1.