Re: Semicolon is not treated properly in awk 3.1.4

[Chapman Flack]

Are you sure it is not a length() or substr() bug, rather than a (less likely)
bug specific to semicolons?  Notice that the lines you give as input to awk
differ between the two examples below; in the second example there is no
semicolon on the first line of input.  The second example behavior is
therefore consistent with an interpretation that length() or substr() is
simply off by one, nothing to do with semicolons.

-Chap

> zardoz 3 % awk '{ print substr($0, 0, length($0) - 6) } '
> JavaMonitorImpl_2_fire_4983_code;
> JavaMonitorImpl_2_fire_4983
> JavaMonitorImpl_2_fire_4983_code\;
> JavaMonitorImpl_2_fire_4983_
> 
> The following happens on 3.1.4 (Debian Linux):
> 
> address@hidden:[snip]$ awk '{ print substr($0, 0, length($0) -  6) } '
> JavaMonitorImpl_2_fire_4983_code
> JavaMonitorImpl_2_fire_49
> JavaMonitorImpl_2_fire_4983_code\;
> JavaMonitorImpl_2_fire_4983