On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 08:02:57PM EST, Dan Henry wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Jan 2009 19:48:06 -0500, Chris Jones <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> >I'm trying to figure out how I can test the return value of a printf
> >statement in an awk script.
> >printf "format", variable
> >if (condition==bad) {exit 1} # if printf failed, exit
> >I have been unable to find what the "condition" in the pseudo-awk
> >above might be.
> Why would it fail? stdout closed? Anyway, I can't answer
> definitively, but am interested and thus I suggest you ask on
> comp.lang.awk also.
The answer is that you can't.
In gawk at least, getline, close(), and system() appear to be the only
awk statements that return a value, possibly because they are
implemented as functions (?) but print & printf do not .. not very
consistent and somewhat confusing when you're skimming through the awk
manual trying to learn the basics in a rush.
CJ
