Re: [bug-gawk] in-place edit request

[Ed Morton]

Arnold -

On 12/31/2012 6:48 AM, address@hidden wrote:
> Hi Ed.
>
> > Arnold - does the proposed solution allow the user to write:
> >
> >       gawk -X 'script' file
> >
> > where "X" is some appropriate letter and the result is to update "file"
> > with the result of executing "script" on the original contents of "file"?
> >
> > I just want to make sure we're talking about implementing something every
> > bit as simple to use as the sed, perl, and ruby equivalents otherwise
> > it's probably not worth bothering with.
> It would be
>
>         gawk -i inplace 'script' file
That is a significant improvement from what we need to do today. Thank you! 
Having said that, we then have these options for inplace editing:

    sed -i 'script' file
    perl -i 'script' file
    ruby -i 'script' file
    awk -i inplace 'script' file

I understand from this email exchange that -i is being used by gawk for 
something else (though I don't see it mentioned at 
http://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.html#Options so I'm not sure what) 
so I assume that -i , unfortunately, is off the table (is it?) but is it really 
not possible to use "-<capital-i>" or some other single character so we can have:

    sed -i 'script' file
    perl -i 'script' file
    ruby -i 'script' file
    awk -I 'script' file

Right now the chosen implementation is driving the interface. Couldn't we retain 
that implementation but also provide the interface the users would expect even 
if it means a little more code internally to map "-I" to the "-i inplace" 
functionality?

> There is nothing stopping anyone from writing a one line wrapper:
>
>         $ cat aip       # Awk In Place
>         #! /bin/sh
>         exec gawk -i inplace "$@"
>
> Arnold

The goal is to avoid people having to write wrapper scripts for awk when they 
don't need to for sed, perl, ruby, etc.

To be clear, IMHO providing "-i inplace" is doing 90% of the work to make awk 
behave like it's peers, it'd just be the icing on the cake if we could get that 
remaining 10%....

    Ed.