README: This is GNU Awk 3.0.3. It should be upwardly compatible with the Bell Labs research version of awk. It is almost completely compliant with the 1993 POSIX 1003.2 standard for awk. (See the note below about POSIX.) Patches 1 through 3 just fix bugs -- see NEWS and ChangeLog for details. See the file INSTALL for installation instructions. Known problems are given in the PROBLEMS file. Work to be done is described briefly in the FUTURES file. Verified ports are listed in the PORTS file. Changes in this version are summarized in the NEWS file. Please read the LIMITATIONS and ACKNOWLEDGMENT files. Read the file POSIX for a discussion of how the standard says comparisons should be done vs. how they really should be done and how gawk does them. To format the documentation with TeX, use at least version 2.151 of texinfo.tex. There is a usable copy of texinfo.tex in the doc directory. The Info file now comes with the distribution. The man page is up to date. INSTALLATION: Check whether there is a system-specific README file for your system under the `README_d' directory. If there's something there that you should have read and didn't, and you bug me about it, I'm going to yell at you. See the file INSTALL. If you have neither bison nor yacc, use the awktab.c file here. It was generated with bison, and has no proprietary code in it. (Note that modifying awk.y without bison or yacc will be difficult, at best. You might want to get a copy of bison from the FSF too.) If you have an MS-DOS or OS/2 system, use the stuff in the `pc' directory. Similarly, there are separate directories for Ataris, Amigas, and VMS. Appendix B of The GNU Awk User's Guide discusses configuration in detail. The configuration process is now based on Autoconf, so the whole business should be considerably simpler than it was in gawk 2.X.Y. After successful compilation, do 'make check' to run a small test suite. There should be no output from the 'cmp' invocations except in the cases where there are small differences in floating point values, and possibly in the case of strftime. Several of the tests ignore errors on purpose; those are not a problem. If there are other differences, please investigate and report the problem. PRINTING THE MANUAL The 'doc' directory contains a recent version of texinfo.tex, which will be necessary for printing the manual. Use `make dvi' to get a DVI file from the manual. In the `doc' directory, use `make postscript' to get a PostScript version of the manual. BUG REPORTS AND FIXES (Un*x systems): Please coordinate changes through Arnold Robbins. In particular, see the section in the manual on reporting bugs. Note that comp.lang.awk is about the worst place to post a gawk bug report. Please, use the mechanisms outlined in the manual. Arnold Robbins INTERNET: arnold@gnu.ai.mit.edu BUG REPORTS AND FIXES (non-Unix ports): MS-DOS: Scott Deifik scottd@amgen.com Darrel Hankerson hankedr@mail.auburn.edu VMS: Pat Rankin rankin@eql.caltech.edu Atari ST: Michal Jaegermann michal@gortel.phys.ualberta.ca OS/2: Kai Uwe Rommel rommel@ars.de Amiga: Fred Fish fnf@ninemoons.com