AWK experts - how would I code around this in awk...

[Dave Howorth]

Steve Flynn wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 2:35 PM, Karl Auer <kauer at biplane.com.au> wrote:
>> Cool! But:

Thanks.

> Indeed. A perl version of the bash script suggested by Alex.
> 
>>  - it reads the entire contents of stdin into memory
> 
> This might be an issue. This AIX box does have 128 gig of RAM but

You need to qualify the type of memory. It reads stdin into *virtual*
memory. It's the amount of disk you have that limits the size, not the
amount of RAM. Just add swap space. You may prefer to use a 64 bit machine.

>>  - there may be problems with arbitrarily large variables

Are you aware of any limits?

>>  - a partial last record will not be terminated with a newline

I didn't see that in the req spec :-P  You can complicate the program
with a print "\n" or somesuch if you must.

>>  - it doesn't handle blank lines
>
> There may well be blank lines, especially where a data entry clerk has
> elected to space the text out with a couple of "enter enter enter"
> lines.

Karl's fix for that works  local $/ = undef;

Cheers, Dave

PS  I sent the prog for fun, don't take it too seriously.