>Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:17:11 -0700
>From: "Garrett D'Amore" <gdamore at sun.com>
>
>> Garrett D'Amore wrote:
>>> A couple of quick notes.
>>>
>>> Shouldn't the Human Readable Output really be Not-An-Interface?
>
>You didn't answer the above question.
I answered it in earlier e-mail (but it is currently still stuck in the
out queue on my machine. Presumably, you'll see it before you see this
response.
>
>>>
... ... ...
>
>>
>>>
>>> It would be "nice" to have documentation for the various gawk
>>> libraries that the project is delivering. (Speaking of which, should
>>> those libraries be in /usr/share/gawk instead of /usr/share/awk? I'm
>>> guessing that they might not be compatible with stock Solaris awk or
>>> nawk....)
>>
>> The component package (and Ubuntu) installs functions, eg. ctime,
>> in /usr/share/awk/, eg. ctime.awk. `info gawk` describes these
>> functions.
>> Since the name doesn't conflict, these functions will be installed
>> in the same directory as the component package.
>
>You misunderstood my concern. My concern is that by having them in a
>directory called "awk", some people might expect that they would
>*function* with a program called "awk". This is the case on Linux
>systems, but it is not the case (or so I presume) for Solaris systems.
>
>Does the path to these libraries get coded directly into the scripts, or
>do they wind up using some sort of default path search mechanism (as for
>C header files)? If the latter, then perhaps we can rename the path to
>gawk, avoid the confusion, and not impact anyone who might desire to use
>these files. If the former, then we may be stuck, and I'll just have to
>hold my nose (unless someone can take the work to make sure that the
>libraries also work with vanilla awk.)
>
>Something to think about, maybe.
The only documentation for these is from "info gawk". They are
expected to be used with /usr/gnu/bin/awk and /usr/bin/gawk; so they
are used by a program called awk depending on how $PATH is set. Making
the name of the directory where they are stored on Linux wouldn't seem
to serve any purpose other than to make Linux scripts that use the
files less portable when moved to Solaris systems.
- Don
>
> -- Garrett
... ... ...
