Re: igawk unsafe temporary file handling

[Paul Eggert]

> Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 04:02:10 +0400
> From: address@hidden
> 
> why not implement the entire igawk in awk?

I didn't offhand see how to do it in awk.

> Is /dev/stdin sufficiently portable?

Should be.  Gawk supports /dev/stdin even if the OS doesn't.

> I suspect some shells may have low limits on the size of variables....
> Now this is limited by the kernel.

I wouldn't worry about those limits too much.  It's just an example.

> Linux allows for up to 32 pages
> for argv[] + envp[] (128 KB on x86), but some other systems have a
> lower limit, possibly as low as one page.

Such a limit is way too low.  Even Linux/x86's limit is too low.

It might not hurt to add a comment about these undersized limits.  But
I don't think the code needs to be rewritten to worry about this, any
more than the existing gawk code has to worry about the issue of /tmp
filesystems being too small.  It's just an example.