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[PLUG] Ubuntu mawk instead of gawk
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In addition to the /bin/sh dash vs. bash thing
(http://lists.netisland.net/archives/plug/plug-2008-08/msg00123.html)
which came up again at PLUG North last night, mawk vs. gawk came up.
Bottom line: Ubuntu comes with mawk instead of gawk. So when your
scripts that use 'awk' break on Ubuntu, that's why.
Details:
Why is this bad? Aside from stuff unexpectedly breaking, according to
the man page the mawk is "Version 1.2 Dec 22 1994" which is just a tad
old. I say according to the man page because mawk doesn't even support
such trivial things as -h, --help, -V, --version, etc... While gawk is
arguably "non-standard" (in the same way that all the GNU tools are
non-standard but usually just better), it *is* the "standard" on Linux.
Except for Ubuntu. mawk is much smaller than gawk, which is probably
why they picked it, but the savings is so minimal and the implications
such a pain that I can only call this a very bone-headed decision.
Perhaps there is a better reason for it, but if so I can't find it.
Anyone else know?
Later,
JP
----------------------------|:::======|-------------------------------
JP Vossen, CISSP |:::======| jp{at}jpsdomain{dot}org
My Account, My Opinions |=========| http://www.jpsdomain.org/
----------------------------|=========|-------------------------------
"Microsoft Tax" = the additional hardware & yearly fees for the add-on
software required to protect Windows from its own poorly designed and
implemented self, while the overhead incidentally flattens Moore's Law.
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