Re: [bug-gawk] third argument to split() always behaves like FS, and the docs are not clear about it

[arnold]

HI.

R <address@hidden> wrote:

> If the third argument to split() is made up of a single character, it
> will NOT be treated as a regular expression:
>
> [ ... ]
>
> This is (for me) completely expected, and it's the way it works in all
> awk implementations I know of.
>
> But neither the man nor the info page of gawk are clear about it --
> they both talk about the 3rd argument as of a 'regular expression'.
> The info page goes into some detail about the case where it's a single
> space, but does not say anything about the case where it's a special
> character like '.' or '('.
>
> Here is the question and my awkward attempt to answer it that triggered this:
> https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/483874/308316

Thanks for the report. I will look at revising the documentation to
be more explicit about this.

Arnold