Re: [gawk] command line variable assignments

[Stepan Kasal]

On Thu, 16 May 2002 02:06:32 -0700, Tom Lord <address@hidden> wrote:
> Versions 3.0.3 and 3.0.6 both seem to think that an "=" in a 
> command line argument indicates a variable assignment rather
> than a filename.  As I read the spec, this is so only if the 
> text to the left of the "=" begins with an underscore or letter and
> contains only characters which are valid in identifiers -- otherwise
> the argument must be treated as a filename.
> 
> In other words:
> 
>       ./gawk [....] /foo/bar/=dir/etc
> 
> is not a syntax error or bad variable assignment -- it tells awk to
> read its input from the named file.

Hallo,
        the current version of GNU awk, 3.1.1, has it (almost) right.
The only problem might be that the messages are sometimes a bit confusing.

$ ./gawk -v ./=file 1
gawk: `./=file' argument to `-v' not in `var=value' form
Usage:  ....

$ ./gawk --lint -v ./=file 1
gawk: warning: invalid syntax in name `./' for variable assignment
gawk: `./=file' argument to `-v' not in `var=value' form
Usage:  .....

$ ./gawk 1 ./=file
gawk: cmd. line:2: fatal: cannot open file `./=file' for reading
        (No such file or directory)

$ ./gawk --lint 1 ./=file
gawk: cmd. line:2: warning: invalid syntax in name `./' for variable assignment
gawk: cmd. line:2: fatal: cannot open file `./=file' for reading
        (No such file or directory)

$ echo foo >./=file
$ ./gawk 1 ./=file
foo
$ ./gawk --lint 1 ./=file
gawk: cmd. line:2: warning: invalid syntax in name `./' for variable assignment
foo

Cheers,
        Stepan Kasal