Bug#34652: PROPOSAL] Policy is not clear about nawk.

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

On Sun, 30 May 1999, Julian Gilbey wrote:

> > I do not withdraw the bug: If every awk in the system is already a "new
> > awk", why do we need /usr/bin/nawk at all?, we could use always
> > /usr/bin/awk and it would always work.
> > 
> > Is there a rationale somewhere?
> > 
> > Maybe we should check what does POSIX say about /usr/bin/awk (does it
> > have to be a new awk?) and act accordingly.
> 
> Well, the mawk manpage seems to suggest that POSIX defines an
> extension of new awk.  The UNIX98 description seems to make no
> comments about the relation between its specs of awk and the AWK
> book.  What are the differences between the old and new awks?  Maybe
> we could check them out -- should be very easy.

Among other things: Old awk is not guaranteed to have user-defined
functions (if I'm not mistaken).

However, I have yet to see an awk packaged for Debian
which is not a new awk.

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