Re: Read command field seperators in Bash
On Sun, 14 Feb 2010 13:42:53 -0500 (EST), Sven Joachim wrote:
> This is handled by the alternatives system, gawk has a higher priority
> than mawk so if you don't take any measures it will provide /usr/bin/awk.
> See update-alternatives(8).
Thanks for the explanation.
Lisi wrote:
> Mmm. But I have only gawk, and installed neither. Nor any other awk. It
> probably depends which set-up one asks for during installation.
If I understand the output of your "aptitude search awk" command correctly,
you have both installed. mawk would have been installed as part of any
installation. If you have gawk too, you must have installed a package
that has a dependency on gawk, directly or indirectly.
Sven wrote:
>
> Well, mawk has been of priority 'required' for a very long time, so I
> guess you removed it manually at some point. Any method to install
> Debian will install all required packages, AFAIK.
You're right, Sven, I forgot to check the priority.
aptitude install mawk_ gawk
would probably not work without some kind of override switches. It
wouldn't like the request to purge a required package.
The bottom line ...
Most awk scripts will run fine on a standard Debian system, since mawk
is a required package. If you can get by with mawk you probably should,
since mawk is reported to be more efficient than gawk. In a few cases,
an awk script may use features that are only supported in gawk, in which
case the package which contains it, if it is packaged properly, will
contain a dependency on gawk. If you are writing your own awk script
and you don't want to install gawk, make sure you don't use any features
that only work with gawk.
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