[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Read command field seperators in Bash



On 2010-02-14 20:03 +0100, Stephen Powell wrote:

>    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.

It would not complain, I have just tested it successfully in a chroot.
The safer way, however, would be

aptitude install gawk && aptitude purge mawk

This avoids a time window where awk is not available.  Note that you can
freely remove required packages that are not essential as long as the
dependencies are fulfilled.  Apt will never automatically remove a
required package, though.

> 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.

This is very similar to the "dash vs bash as /bin/sh" topic.

Sven


Reply to: