Re: -F fs_val handles backslash-newline differently, compared to -v FS=val and FS=val

[Neil R. Ormos]

Denys Vlasenko wrote:

> GNU awk 5.1.1

> gawk -F '\
> a' 'BEGIN { print "FS1=" FS }'

> gawk -v FS='\
> a' 'BEGIN { print "FS2=" FS }'

> echo | gawk '{ print "FS3=" FS }' FS='\
> a'

> The first command treats "backslash+newline" as backslash:

> FS1=\a

> The second and third commands treat the same as empty string:

> FS2=a
> FS3=a

> I think it would be better if all forms have the same rules.

I was unable to reproduce the reported behavior using any of Gawk versions 
4.1.4, 5.1.1, and 5.2.0 and the tcsh shell.

When I tested, in the first two commands, FS1 and FS2 contained the characters 
$0A $61.  In the third command, FS3 contained a single blank.

I did not test using any other shells.