Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!jik From: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: Import variables in to awk. Message-ID: <15924@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> Date: 15 Nov 89 18:19:52 GMT References: <10531@thorin.cs.unc.edu> <15919@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <20774@mimsy.umd.edu> Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU Reply-To: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) Distribution: na Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lines: 18 In article <20774@mimsy.umd.edu> chris@mimsy.umd.edu (Chris Torek) writes: >... >The `BEGIN' statement is done before any `files' are opened; the `END' >statement is done after all `files' have been read. Any `files' of >the form `a=b' set variable `a' to value `b'. Nifty! Two questions: 1. Why isn't this mentioned in the BSD man page awk(1), or in the /usr/doc documentation about awk? 2. What happens if you actually want to read in a file that has = in the filename? How am I supposed to know what happens if the feature isn't mentioned in documentation? :-) Jonathan Kamens USnail: MIT Project Athena 11 Ashford Terrace jik@Athena.MIT.EDU Allston, MA 02134 Office: 617-253-8495 Home: 617-782-0710