Gawk: Trap/handle a fatal error on tcp/ip networking

[Haris Makripodis]

Hello to all,

I am trying to make a simple gawk program that tests and purses html
pages using gawk's built-in network support.

Code:

#!/usr/local/bin/gawk -f 
BEGIN { 
        RS = ORS = "\r\n" 
        site = "www.wrong-url-for-test.com"
        port = 80 
        uri = "" 
        service = "/inet/tcp/0/"site"/"port 
        print "GET " uri |& service 
        while ((service |& getline) > 0) print $0 
        close (service) 
        # command 1 
        # command 2 
        # command 3..... 
}

My problem is that I 'm trying to find a way of trapping fatal errors in
case that the target ip is not valid. For example if I run the above
code, it returns 

gawk: ./gawktest.awk:8: fatal: can't open two way socket
`/inet/tcp/0/www.wrong-url-for-test.com/80' for input/output (No such
file or directory)

My aim is to prevent this fatal error and handle it accordingly so as to
continue processing to the other parts of the programm (#command
1,2,3... on my example) .

The only solution I found so far is described on the below url:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.awk/browse_thread/thread/199ec020622eb691/27265a32f1be8475?

Is there another way of handling this error?

I wonder why tcp/ip connectivity issues should be FATAL in a first
place.. 
 
Thank you for your time,

Best regards

Haris