awk version and "The AWK Programming Language" by Aho/Kernighan/Weinberger ca. 1988

bryan...@gmail.com

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Mar 3, 2012, 10:54:11 AM3/3/12

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What would have been the awk version available at the time "The AWK Programming Language" by Aho/Kernighan/Weinberger [*] was last published in 1988? (the gnu ftp archive appears to stop around 1993).

-Bryan
[*] ISBN-10: 0-201-07981-X, ISBN-13: 978-0201079814, QA76.73.A95A35

Janis Papanagnou

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Mar 3, 2012, 11:35:00 AM3/3/12

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On 03.03.2012 16:54, bryan...@gmail.com wrote:
> What would have been the awk version available at the time "The AWK
> Programming Language" by Aho/Kernighan/Weinberger [*] was last published in
> 1988? (the gnu ftp archive appears to stop around 1993).

Here's some data that I had collected and that may serve you...

1977 awk ("oawk")
1979 official oawk release
1985 awk ("nawk")
1986 gawk
mawk (byte-code)
1987 official nawk release
1992 awk
1999 awka (compiler)
2003 xgawk (XML u.a.)
2011 gawk 4.0.0 release

So the answer depends, but the book most certainly describes the
revised/fixed official AT&T version that was released in 1987.

Janis

pmarin

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Mar 3, 2012, 5:03:23 PM3/3/12

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The original version is still maintained by Brian kernighan[1] who
added most of the posix extensions and fixed a lot of bugs. BSD
operating systems use it as the default awk[2] interpreter. Another
fork of this code is the Plan9 version which I think it has better
support for unicode and there is a unix port of it in "Plan 9 for user
space"[3].

[1] http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/awkbook/index.html
[2] http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/external/historical/nawk/dist/
[3] http://swtch.com/usr/local/plan9/src/cmd/awk/

Aharon Robbins

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Mar 7, 2012, 2:45:37 AM3/7/12

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In article <jith7k$vdq$1...@news.m-online.net>,

Janis Papanagnou <janis_pa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>On 03.03.2012 16:54, bryan...@gmail.com wrote:
>> What would have been the awk version available at the time "The AWK
>> Programming Language" by Aho/Kernighan/Weinberger [*] was last published in
>> 1988? (the gnu ftp archive appears to stop around 1993).
>
>Here's some data that I had collected and that may serve you...

Except that some of it is wrong.

> 1977 awk ("oawk")
> 1979 official oawk release

With V7 Unix

> 1985 awk ("nawk")
> 1986 gawk

Not sure when the first gawk release was made. I think it was later
than 1986, though.

> mawk (byte-code)

That's wrong. See below.

> 1987 official nawk release

This is about right. The awk book was published late in '87 with a 1988
copyright date on it. Mike Brennan didn't learn about awk until after
reading that book. Mawk was first released approximately in 1990. (I first
started corresponding with Mike in 1990, which would have been when
he released his first version.)

I joined the GNU project's work on gawk in 1988 (or VERY late 1987) after
buying and reading the awk book. The first support for new awk features
in gawk was sometime in 1989 or maybe late 1988.

In 1989 the SVR4 nawk had a few additional features that BWK added after
consultation with me and the guys at MKS (ENVIRON, multiple -f, tolower,
toupper, \a, as I recall).

> 1992 awk

Here or 1993 was when BWK first made his awk available through netlib.

> 1999 awka (compiler)
> 2003 xgawk (XML u.a.)
> 2011 gawk 4.0.0 release
>
>So the answer depends, but the book most certainly describes the
>revised/fixed official AT&T version that was released in 1987.

Right.

There is a section in the gawk manual describing the development of the
language and at what point features were added.
--
Aharon (Arnold) Robbins arnold AT skeeve DOT com
P.O. Box 354 Home Phone: +972 8 979-0381
Nof Ayalon Cell Phone: +972 50 729-7545
D.N. Shimshon 99785 ISRAEL

Janis Papanagnou

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Mar 7, 2012, 7:46:18 AM3/7/12

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On 07.03.2012 08:45, Aharon Robbins wrote:
> In article <jith7k$vdq$1...@news.m-online.net>,
> Janis Papanagnou <janis_pa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> On 03.03.2012 16:54, bryan...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> What would have been the awk version available at the time "The AWK
>>> Programming Language" by Aho/Kernighan/Weinberger [*] was last published in
>>> 1988? (the gnu ftp archive appears to stop around 1993).
>>
>> Here's some data that I had collected and that may serve you...
>
> Except that some of it is wrong.

Not too much as I see. :-) Thanks for corrections, anyway, and sorry for
any inaccurate data. Unfortunately I now cannot tell from which sources
I collected the various dates; to me, with one exception that you have
corrected, they looked confident. I've added some more information below.

>
>> 1977 awk ("oawk")
>> 1979 official oawk release
>
> With V7 Unix
>
>> 1985 awk ("nawk")
>> 1986 gawk
>
> Not sure when the first gawk release was made. I think it was later
> than 1986, though.

http://awk.info/?history says 1986. (I had another source, though, that
also said so. If you have any evidence for another date I'd appreciate
to hear about it.)

>
>> mawk (byte-code)
>
> That's wrong. See below.

(This one was where I also had my doubts; I had just one source and this
looked not too reliable, neither did the date look reasonable. Thanks.)

>
>> 1987 official nawk release
>
> This is about right. The awk book was published late in '87 with a 1988
> copyright date on it. Mike Brennan didn't learn about awk until after
> reading that book. Mawk was first released approximately in 1990. (I first
> started corresponding with Mike in 1990, which would have been when
> he released his first version.)
>
> I joined the GNU project's work on gawk in 1988 (or VERY late 1987) after
> buying and reading the awk book. The first support for new awk features
> in gawk was sometime in 1989 or maybe late 1988.
>
> In 1989 the SVR4 nawk had a few additional features that BWK added after
> consultation with me and the guys at MKS (ENVIRON, multiple -f, tolower,
> toupper, \a, as I recall).

Yes. My source said that all major language features had been completed
in 1987, there were only some minor additions and bug fixes later.

(Mind, though, that for the question in topic, existence of, e.g. ENVIRON
is not relevant; those additional features are not described in The Book.)

>
>> 1992 awk

Here I accidentally dropped the event label; it should have been

1992 awk POSIX.2 (utilities) standard definition

>
> Here or 1993 was when BWK first made his awk available through netlib.
>
>> 1999 awka (compiler)
>> 2003 xgawk (XML u.a.)
>> 2011 gawk 4.0.0 release
>>
>> So the answer depends, but the book most certainly describes the
>> revised/fixed official AT&T version that was released in 1987.
>
> Right.
>
> There is a section in the gawk manual describing the development of the
> language and at what point features were added.

So the mawk entry was the only issue?

Thanks also for the additional information.

Janis