** Description changed:
The only feature used by dpkg-awk beyond those required by POSIX is
'delete array'. This extension is supported by all awk variants
currently in Debian, i.e. by gawk, mawk, and original-awk. Attached diff
drops dependency on gawk. The first version of the patch replaced
dependency on gawk with dependency on virtual package awk provided by
all of the above awk packages, but packages shouldn't depend on awk
according to Debian policy: awk is essential albeit virtual, the only
package that depends on it is base-files.
Note however that unsetting environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT in
/usr/bin/dpkg-awk is still needed because otherwise if gawk is
configured as default awk it treats 'delete array' as an error (see
debbugs #170375).
Note also that debbugs #64146 and #64358 aroused out of a mistake: the
previous Debian maintainer of dpkg-awk forgot to replace gawk with awk
in /usr/bin/dpkg-awk when trying to drop dependency on gawk in dpkg-awk
1.0.0.
Actually, 'delete array' is supported even by Plan 9 awk that gets
installed by package 9base as /usr/lib/plan9/bin/awk and doesn't provide
awk in Debian.
But if POSIX compatibility must be retained by all means, the following
patch should also be applied. It replaces 'delete array' with
'split("",array)'. In this case, 'unset POSIXLY_CORRECT' in /usr/bin
/dpkg-awk obviously isn't needed anymore.
+ ----------------------------------------
diff --git a/dpkg-awk.awk b/dpkg-awk.awk
index 7669c40..cf00c43 100644
--- a/dpkg-awk.awk
+++ b/dpkg-awk.awk
@@ -86,7 +86,7 @@ BEGIN {
if (options["debug"] >= 1)
print "ARGV[0]='" ARGV[0] "'\n"
- delete ARGV
+ split("", ARGV)
if (options["debug"] >= 1)
for (a in options)
print "options[" a "]='" options[a] "'\n"
@@ -99,8 +99,8 @@ function my_split(input, output,
a, b, fields, save0)
{
- delete output
- delete fields
+ split("", output)
+ split("", fields)
save0 = $0
$0 = input
num_fields = split(input, fields, "\n")
+ ----------------------------------------
+
+ However, to make dpkg-awk work with very old gawk (<= 3.0.3) or with
+ some other ancient awk variants like nawk from the Heirloom Toolchest
+ (http://heirloom.sourceforge.net/tools.html) which is derived from
+ original Unix code released by Caldera
+ (http://unixtools.sourceforge.net) this patch still isn't enough. Those
+ awk variants don't like '=' at the start of a regular expression. If
+ there's a need I can add a patch that fixes it.
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1092539
Title:
Dependency on gawk should be dropped
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