Could we get an extension for FIELDWIDTHS such that a "*" (or some other
indicator) means "everything else"? It's very common to have to deal
with files like:
foo bar stuff
bill johnny other stuff of some different length
where it's easy to see the length of the first 2 fields but the length
of the final field can't be determined based on any sample so we end up
writing code like:
FIELDWIDTHS = "5 7 9999"
and pick some arbitrary number that we hope will be big enough to hold
whatever appears in that 3rd field. It would be clearer and more robust
if we could instead write:
FIELDWIDTHS = "5 7 *"
or similar.
We've been having a discussion about the applicability of this at
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.awk/uip6-Ll9Lj0 in
case some more background is useful.
Regards,
Ed.