Re: config files substitution with awk

[Paul Eggert]

Paul Eggert <address@hidden> writes:

> That part of autoconf.texi seems to be incorrect.

I installed this patch to improve things in this area:

2006-11-21  Paul Eggert  <address@hidden>

        * doc/autoconf.texi (Limitations of Usual Tools): Don't claim
        that traditional Awk lacks 3-arg "split".  It has it.
        Mention that FS must be a single character, and a few other
        99-byte limits of traditional Awk.

--- doc/autoconf.texi   17 Nov 2006 00:16:27 -0000      1.1107
+++ doc/autoconf.texi   21 Nov 2006 17:28:46 -0000
@@ -13046,12 +13046,22 @@
 Traditional Awk @code{getline} is not at all compatible with Posix;
 avoid it.

-Traditional Awk @code{split} supports only two arguments.
+In traditional Awk, @code{FS} must be a string containing just one
+ordinary character, and similarly for the field-separator argument to
address@hidden

 Traditional Awk has a limit of 99
 fields in a record.  You may be able to circumvent this problem by using
 @code{split}.

+The original version of Awk had a limit of at most 99 bytes per
address@hidden field, 99 bytes per @code{substr} substring, and 99 bytes
+per run of non-special characters in a @code{printf} format, but these
+bugs have been fixed on all practical hosts that we know of.
+
+Traditional Awk has a limit of at most 99 bytes in a number formatted by
address@hidden; for example, @code{OFMT="%.300e"; print 0.1;} will dump
+core.

 @item @command{basename}
 @c ---------------------