Hoi, thanks a lot for your helpful answer. This was the kind of answer I was wishing to get.

It's hard to resist getting the book, after your favorable words. ;-) meillo [2023-09-10 21:41] arnold(a)skeeve.com > > Hi. > > markus schnalke <meillo(a)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 >