[bug-gawk] GAWK feature suggestions

[address@hidden]

Hi,

I've been using awk and now gawk on and off for a number of years, since the 
late 1980s to be exact, usually for one-liners or small scripts.

Gawk is a major step up from awk, in particular multi-dimensional arrays and 
the SYMTAB array which I'm using extensively. The new namespace feature is a 
god-send too as I'm working with multiple library files and avoiding name 
clashes was getting quite complex. I'm now working on developing a fairly major 
project (several thousand lines of code so far), and in the course of working 
on this I've come across a few features that I would find really useful, which 
I'd like to suggest for future consideration.

So, in no particular order :

-        Possibility to return an array from a function. This has probably 
already been requested, it would avoid the need for a number of public arrays.

-        Nested functions. Not particularly important, but useful to hide 
helper functions from public view

-        Block comments. Probably already suggested.

-        And most useful for me when testing function libraries: ignore all 
rules if a file is called via @include (or maybe a @ignore-rules directive, as 
there may be rare cases where you want to include rules in an @include file). 
This would allow to combine test code and functions in a single file.

Thanks to all who've contributed to this project over the years, keep up the 
good work.

Kind regards,
Chris Newell

Chris Newell
Application Support Engineer
BAE Systems Applied Intelligence
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