Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!ukc!stl!stc!idec!camcon!mrh
From: mrh@camcon.uucp (Mark Hughes)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: GNU awk (gawk) on MS-DOS
Message-ID: <1455@titan.camcon.uucp>
Date: 10 May 88 10:06:26 GMT
Organization: Cambridge Consultants Ltd., Cambridge, UK
Lines: 38
Keywords: awk gnu gawk

Has anyone had success making the recently posted GNU awk program
do something useful on MS-DOS? If so, please mail me so I can find
out what is wrong with this potentially indispensable program.

I've compiled it using Microsoft C v5.0 easily. It required only 
one slight change, "#define index strchr", but refuses to work 
properly all the same. I mailed the original poster about this
just before he posted the sources (the executable having been 
posted a few weeks earlier), but got no reply. I guess he thought
the sources may solve the problem. So what is the problem?

I am trying the most trivial awk scripts you can imagine, but gawk
either fails to accept them, saying that a given regular expression is
too big.

For example

/a string/ { print }

prints any line of a file containing the text "a string" on Un*x, but 
gawk compiled for MS-DOS rejects it saying: "Regular expression too big".

I would also like to know if other people have tried gawk out with similar
results, but most of all would like to hear from anyone who has used it
successfully on MS-DOS.

(By the way, I have the sources to bison - GNU version of yacc, and that
screws up on MS-DOS as well!)

PS I'm using MS-DOS 3.2 on a (very compatible) Amstrad PC1512 and all my awk
scripts have been taken from text files rather thatn being specified on 
a command line.

-- 
-------------------  UUCP:    mrh@camcon.uucp  / ..uunet!mcvax!ukc!camcon!mrh
|   Mark Hughes   |  Telex:   265871 (MONREF G) quoting: MAG70076
|(Compware . CCL) |  BT Gold: 72:MAG70076
-------------------  Teleph:  Cambridge (UK) (0)223-358855