Re: bin/39002: harmful AWK extension: non-portable escaped character

["Greg A. Woods; Planix, Inc." <woods%planix.ca@localhost>]

The following reply was made to PR bin/39002; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: "Greg A. Woods; Planix, Inc." <woods%planix.ca@localhost>
To: gnats-bugs%NetBSD.org@localhost
Cc: 
Subject: Re: bin/39002: harmful AWK extension: non-portable escaped character
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:32:02 -0400

 On 20-Jun-08, at 4:10 PM, cheusov%tut.by@localhost wrote:
 > I think gawk does right thing here and I'd like to see the same in  
 > NetBSD.
 
 Gawk is sometimes a noisy pain in the butt.  :-)
 
 It is long standing tradition in Unix tools and languages to ignore  
 the backslash on non-special characters, right from C on up.
 
 The Gawk noise is probably there to mimic the similar noise GCC also  
 makes.
 
 I personally don't think AWK should make any noisy warnings like this.
 
 The fact that mawk does the wrong thing is disturbing, though I'm not  
 sure that justifies making a noisy warning.
 
 -- 
                                        Greg A. Woods; Planix, Inc.
                                        <woods%planix.ca@localhost>