Re: GAWK getopt documentation is incomplete and fragmented

[Aharon Robbins]

My direct note to the poster bounced back, so...
---------------------------------------------------------
Greetings. Apologies for the long delay in replying. This is dealt
with and will be showing up soon in the gawk CVS archive (see
savannah.gnu.org).

Thanks!

Arnold

> Date: Tue, 02 Aug 2005 09:04:37 -0700
> From: address@hidden
> Subject: GAWK getopt documentation is incomplete and fragmented
> To: address@hidden
>
> N.B.: All citations are the book page numbers, not the PDF page numbers, and
> refer to Edition 3 (June 2004) of the PDF, which appeared to be the most
> current
> version available right now.
>
>
> I would like to suggest a change to the documentation of the GAWK getopt
> function. The documentation leaves out an important implementation detail
> that
> caused a lot of heartache when I tried to make use of this feature.
>
> Section 12.4 Processing Command Line Options [Page 196] omits the
> explanation
> that the ARGV array must be cleared of all processed options before the
> BEGIN
> block is completed. This is not mentioned until 13.2.1 [Page 212]:
>     "Also, note that after getopt is through, we have to clear out all the
> elements of ARGV from 1 to Optind, so that awk does not try to process the
> command-line options as file names."
>
> I propose that this awk-specific implementation detail be explained in the
> same
> section of the manual where GAWK getopt is introduced, so that a person who
> is
> attempting to use getopt without having to hunt through sample applications
> in
> a completely different section of the manual, and additionally who is
> accustomed to getopt's C behavior, can decipher what it is that (s)he must
> do
> in order to get proper behavior in awk.
>
> Thanks for considering this change to the documentation and thank you for
> producing a high-quality program that saves me and my coworkers many hours
> and a great deal of stress.
>
> Matt Hall
> Verizon Wireless
>
> P.S. I am working on a patch to GAWK that will allow it to see updates to
> ENVIRON["TZ"] and other environment variables. I noticed this was on the
> wish list, and I might have something available for this soon if I can work 
> out
> some problems with the patch.