Re: CVS commit: pkgsrc/pkgtools/pbulk/files/pbulk/scripts

[Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg%britannica.bec.de@localhost>]

On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 04:43:45PM +0100, Alistair Crooks wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 03:41:43PM +0100, Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:
> > On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 01:18:16PM +0000, Tobias Nygren wrote:
> > > Log Message:
> > > mawk(1) doesn't know how to take length() of an array.
> > 
> > This is not supposed to be used with mawk, but nbawk. So how did you end
> > up there? I strongly dislike this...
> 
> well, whether joerg likes it or not, pkgsrc should work with any awk
> flavour.  we took gawk-isms out in the past to stop the whole
> experience being less than satisfactory - the same must be done here.

It doesn't work with any awk flavour and requiring that is just insane.
Take Solaris awk for example.

> i'm fed up with arbitrary restrictions being introduced in the name of
> ... well, i'm not sure why they've been introduced.

I consider mawk quite a bit like dash. It has a lot of small compat
glitches all over the place and was practically dead for a long time
too. In this specific case there is an alternative that doesn't add
random overhead for something I think only some strange Linux
distributions use.

Joerg