On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 21:41:57 +0100, Stuart Henderson wrote: > I don't know which is "correct" (the manpage isn't enlightening) but > it was a bit unexpected so I wanted to at least draw attention to it > in case it breaks somebody else's script.
The awk manual leaves a lot of things unspecified (buy the book ;-). Does this addition help clear things up? - todd Index: awk.1 =================================================================== RCS file: /cvs/src/usr.bin/awk/awk.1,v retrieving revision 1.53 diff -u -p -u -r1.53 awk.1 --- awk.1 17 Jun 2020 15:34:11 -0000 1.53 +++ awk.1 26 Jun 2020 21:39:19 -0000 @@ -140,6 +140,16 @@ refers to the entire line. If .Va FS is null, the input line is split into one field per character. +Lines are split into fields using the value of +.Va FS +at the time the line is read. +Because of this, +.Va FS +is usually set via the +.Fl F +option or inside of a +.Ic BEGIN +block. .Pp Normally, any number of blanks separate fields. In order to set the field separator to a single blank, use the
