[TUHS] The AWK Programming Language, 2nd Ed.: What's new?

[Stuff Received]

On 2023-09-11 01:59, markus schnalke wrote:
> Hoi,
> 
> thanks a lot for your helpful answer. This was the kind of answer
> I was wishing to get.

More tidbits here: https://www.awk.dev/

S.


> It's hard to resist getting the book, after your favorable words.
> ;-)
> 
> 
> meillo
> 
> 
> 
> [2023-09-10 21:41] arnold at skeeve.com
>>
>> Hi.
>>
>> markus schnalke <meillo at marmaro.de> wrote:
>>
>>> Hoi,
>>>
>>> I just discovered that one of my favorite computer books about my
>>> best liked programming language (besides C) releases in a second
>>> edition. Does anyone know what the differences of 1st and 2nd
>>> edition are?
>>>
>>> As the original book is almost perfect, the only rework and
>>> extension direction I can think of is towards different
>>> implementations like gawk, mawk, portability and such things.
>>>
>>> Does anyone know more about it? Maybe some inside information? ;-)
>>>
>>> meillo
>>
>> Inside information? As it happens, yes, I do have some. :-)
>> (I was a reviewer.)
>>
>> [In the below, "awk" means Brian Kernighan's awk.]
>>
>> In the 36 (!) years since the first edition was published, awk
>> has undergone, shall we say, a large number of small changes. These
>> are listed in the FIXES file currently in the master branch of
>> https://github.com/onetrueawk/awk.
>>
>> In addition, Brian Kernighan decided to add support for UTF-8 input,
>> which is what awk now expects, and support for CSV input files when
>> invoked with the --csv option. Furthermore, there is a new \u escape
>> sequence which must be followed by 1-8 hexadecimal digits for specifying
>> Unicode code points.
>>
>> The book itself has been carefully revised. The large second chapter
>> which was a reference to the full language was moved to an appendix.
>> Many of the example programs from the first edition were retained
>> and updated, but there is also quite of lot of pleasing new material.
>>
>> There is mention of, and occasional comparison with, gawk, mawk and
>> Ben Hoyt's GoAwk, but by and large the focus is on the authors' version.
>>
>> The new code is currently in the "csv" branch of the above Github
>> repo.  The maintainer is in the process of tidying up the repo (dealing
>> with issues and pull requests) and will merge the csv branch into
>> master sometime in the very near future.
>>
>> I'm told that the printed books with get to the publisher's warehouse
>> towards the end of September. The book is available now on O'Reilly's
>> Safari learning site (safari.oreilly.com) for anyone who has a
>> subscription.
>>
>> Matching code (--csv and \u) are in gawk's master branch now. I will
>> make a release this fall, after the new code has moved into master
>> in BWK's awk.
>>
>> I heartily recommend the book; it is totally up to Brian Kernighan's
>> usual very high standard.
>>
>> Enjoy,
>>
>> Arnold
>>