Hi. New awk existed inside the Research group for some time before it filtered out through System V. It was even available separately, directly from them, to educational institutions. Circa 1986 I got a copy that way when I worked at the Emory University computing center. True but not relevant; new awk was released with System V at either 3.1 or 3.2; I'm leaning towards 3.1 since that is what I wrote way back when in the gawk manual when I knew for sure. :-) Unless anyone can check the actual sources, I think we should declare this closed... Thanks to everyone for the feedback. Arnold