28 Mar
2025
28 Mar
'25
7:22 a.m.
Chet Ramey via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
It also says "The standard utilities that have
such restrictions always
specify "text files" in their STDIN or INPUT FILES sections," so you
can't
avoid it.
awk is one such utility (sh is not). This is an application requirement, so
awk is required to add a newline at the end of a file that does not have
one.
No awk I know of actually does that. Instead, they all treat end of file
as terminating the current input record:
$ for awk in gawk nawk mawk mksawk "busybox awk" goawk
do echo == $awk
echo -n ab:cd | $awk -v RS=: '{ print ">" $0 "<" }'
done
== gawk
ab<
cd<
== nawk
ab<
cd<
== mawk
ab<
cd<
== mksawk
ab<
cd<
== busybox awk
ab<
cd<
== goawk
ab<
cd<
If a newline were being added, the output would have been:
ab<
cd
<
Nor is this something that I'm about to change, or suggest to any other
awk author to change.
My two cents,
Arnold