Gawk 5.2.0 released!

[Arnold Robbins]

Greetings all.

This note announces the next major release of GNU Awk: version 5.2.0.

The following files may be retrieved via HTTPS from
https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gawk:

-rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 6540181 Sep  4 18:52 gawk-5.2.0.tar.gz
-rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 3228577 Sep  4 18:52 gawk-5.2.0.tar.lz
-rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 3386344 Sep  4 18:52 gawk-5.2.0.tar.xz

This is a major new release.  The relevant part of the NEWS file
is appended below.

This release represents a lot of very hard work by a number of people.
I thank them all for their contributions, I could not have done it
by myself.

Differences from gawk 5.1.1 are not available; they would be too large.

The online documentation on the GNU web site is already updated,
including a manual for the new persistent memory feature.

The usual GNU build incantation should be used:

        tar -xpvzf gawk-5.2.0.tar.gz
        cd gawk-5.2.0
        ./configure && make && make check

Please use the new buggawk script to report bugs. If it doesn't
work for you, then send email to bug-gawk@gnu.org.

NOTE that the manual's instructions for sending bug reports have
been updated. Please review them carefully before submitting a report!

ONLY bug reports should be submitted to the bug-gawk list. All other
questions should use the relatively new help-gawk@gnu.org mailing list.

Enjoy!

Arnold Robbins (on behalf of all the gawk developers)
arnold@skeeve.com
------------------------------------------------------------
   Copyright (C) 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
   
   Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
   are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
   notice and this notice are preserved.

Changes from 5.1.x to 5.2.0
---------------------------

*****************************************************************************
* MPFR mode (the -M option) is now ON PAROLE.  This feature is now being    *
* supported by a volunteer in the development team and not by the primary   *
* maintainer.  If this situation changes, then the feature will be removed. *
* For more information see this section in the manual:                      *
* https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/MPFR-On-Parole.html    *
*****************************************************************************

1. Infrastructure upgrades: Libtool 2.4.7, Bison 3.8.2.

2. Numeric scalars now compare in the same way as C for the relational
   operators. Comparison order for sorting has not changed.  This only
   makes a difference when comparing Infinity and NaN values with
   regular numbers; it should not be noticeable most of the time.

3. If the AWK_HASH environment variable is set to "fnv1a" gawk will
   use the FNV1-A hash function for associative arrays.

4. The CMake infrastructure has been removed. In the five years it was in
   the tree, nobody used it, and it was not updated.

5. There is now a new function, mkbool(), that creates Boolean-typed
   values.  These values *are* numbers, but they are also tagged as
   Boolean. This is mainly for use with data exchange to/from languages
   or environments that support real Boolean values. See the manual
   for details.

6. As BWK awk has supported interval expressions since 2019, they are
   now enabled even if --traditional is supplied. The -r/--re-interval option
   remains, but it does nothing.

7. The rwarray extension has two new functions, writeall() and readall(),
   for saving / restoring all of gawk's variables and arrays.

8. The new `gawkbug' script should be used for reporting bugs.

9. The manual page (doc/gawk.1) has been considerably reduced in size.
   Wherever possible, details were replaced with references to the online
   copy of the manual.

10. Gawk now supports Terence Kelly's "persistent malloc" (pma),
    allowing gawk to preserve its variables, arrays and user-defined
    functions between runs. THIS IS AN EXPERIMENTAL FEATURE!
   
    For more information, see the manual. A new pm-gawk.1 man page
    is included, as is a separate user manual that focuses on the feature.

11. Support for OS/2 has been removed. It was not being actively
    maintained.

12. Similarly, support for DJGPP has been removed. It also was not
    being actively maintained.

13. VAX/VMS is no longer supported, as it can no longer be tested.
    The files for it remain in the distribution but will be removed
    eventually.

14. Some subtle issues with untyped array elements being passed to
    functions have been fixed.

15. Syntax errors are now immediately fatal. This prevents problems
    with errors from fuzzers and other such things.

16. There have been numerous minor code cleanups and bug fixes. See the
    ChangeLog for details.

Changes from 5.1.1 to 5.1.x
---------------------------

1. Infrastructure upgrades: Automake 1.16.5, Texinfo 6.8.

2. The rwarray extension now supports writing and reading GMP and
   MPFR values. As a result, a bug in the API code was fixed.