Re: Read command field seperators in Bash

[Stephen Powell <zlinuxman@wowway.com>]

On Sun, 14 Feb 2010 12:51:16 -0500 (EST), Lisi wrote:
> On Sunday 14 February 2010 17:38:48 Paul E Condon wrote:
>> On 20100214_100441, John Salmon wrote:
>>> Is there a way to change the field seperators in Bash's read command
>>> (Debian Lenny)? I could use gawk to do what I need but, since gawk isn't
>>> installed in the Lenny distribution, I'de rather use something that is.
>>>
>>>     John Salmon
>>> salmonjj@comcast.net
>>
>> gawk may not be the default awk workalike in lenny, but it is
>> certainly available in lenny, at least it was a couple of months ago,
>> just before I switched to squeeze.
> 
> It is the Lenny default on my system.  I.e. it is installed, but I hadn't 
> asked for it.

awk is a virtual package provided by both the real package mawk and the
real package gawk.  On my Lenny system, mawk is installed, but gawk is not.
Most awk scripts will work fine with mawk.  But occasionally an awk script will
use features that don't work with the mawk implementation of awk but will work
with the gawk implementation of awk.

   aptitude install mawk_ gawk

will replace mawk with gawk.  It is possible to have both installed,
in which case gawk seems to override mawk.

(My, what a tongue twister!)