Re: parsing getline var argument

[Jürgen Kahrs]

Joel E. Denny wrote:

> Recent releases of GAWK behave in the same way, but this behavior differs 
> from /usr/bin/awk under Solaris 10:
> 
>   % /usr/bin/awk '{getline $4; print $4;}' > stdout
>   line 1
>   line 2
>   % od -c stdout
>   0000000  \n
>   0000001

The awk on Solaris is an oawk (old awk as of 1978).
getline was introduced in 1985, but Sun chose to
ignore this for more than 20 years now.
 
> What is the correct behavior?  Is `getline $4;' a GNU extension?  Or is 
> the behavior undefined here?

The behavior is defined and GAWK behaves correctly.