Re: [bug-gawk] Feature suggestion - function abs(X)

[Peter Brooks]

Thank you for your considered response. I've downloaded
gawkextlib-code, thank you for the tip, I'm going to enjoy exploring!

When is gawk 5.0 due?

Regards,
Peter

On Wed, 3 Oct 2018 at 10:12, <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> Hi.
>
> Peter Brooks <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> > Dear Arnold,
> >
> > I'm not criticising, complaining, or asking you to change your mind --
> > just to get that out of the way!
>
> Sure, no problem.
>
> > I've been thinking about your comment. I see the logic of keeping the
> > core of awk simple, and I know it's trivially easy to keep adding this
> > script, thank you for reminding me of the @include. I think that I
> > might start making my own 'mystuff.awk' and use it to include all the
> > standard functions.
>
> That is an easy solution.
>
> > I wondered, though, what is the guiding philosophy for the future of
> > gawk? Is it to be as faithful to the original awk as possible? Or
> > might it develop to be more versatile? For example, I know R is
> > wonderful if you want lots of graphics, but it's a bit clumsy if you
> > just want a basic statistical summary of a .csv file. Might a future
> > awk have an option to calculate standard stats as it loads numeric
> > data? just a thought.
>
> So, I haven't formalized the "guiding philosophy" but maybe I should.
>
> There are several goals:
>
> 1. Keep the language "awk"; it should not become unrecognizable, even
> if programs in it will only run on gawk.
>
> 2. Keep the core from getting any larger unless absolutely necessary.
> There will be one big change in gawk 5.0, and I hope that that will
> be the last major language-visible change.
>
> 3. Add new functionality either in awk scripts (-f, @include) or
> in loadable extensions written in C or C++ (-l, @load)
>
> 4. Extend the core only if some feature is:
>    A. Truly desirable
>    B. Cannot be done via (2) or (3) above
>    C. Can be implemented without too much pain in the core
>
> Combining modules with awk files is a powerful technique. Something
> like your stats calculation can be done that way.  Things like that
> should not be done automatically, because then there's overhead that
> many (most) users don't want or need.
>
> If you're not familiar with the C extensions facility, check it out. :-)
>
> Thanks,
>
> Arnold



-- 
Peter Brooks


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