GNU Awk 3.1.3 can't spawn more shells...

[alessandro salvatori]

my system is a debian/sid with kernel 2.6.0-test2-bk6 and all my filesystems 
are of type jfs. i recall gawk with --posix as the only option.

i work on an input file and for each line i decide a dirname where to place 
some files that will contain each one different fields from that line...

system("/bin/mkdir " valueof[dirname])

works for about 90 times then system returns value 127, which could mean either 
it could not spawn the shell or the shell couldn't find the binary (but i gave 
an absolute path... and till the previous time it could find it very well...)

a bash for((;;)) has no problem to create all that directories. and neither an 
awk for(;;) has any problem to create a huge number of directories...

from that time on it doesn't either work system("ls") or system("echo 
hello!")...

hope this is my fault.

thank you in advance
cheers
sandr8