line length limit in awk

[Jim Wright]

Is the limitation of number of fields per record in (n)awk insurmountable?

My data files consist of a julian date in "%13.5f " format followed
by 100 data readings in " %8.2f" format, followed by a newline.  Pretty
tame stuff, but awk, nawk and vi all claim the lines are too long to
deal with.  Other tools have varying success.  Am I screwed or is
there and easy way to fix awk?  (Without a source license.)

--
Jim Wright
jwright at cfht.hawaii.edu
Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Corp.