Re: gawk feature request: array assignment

[Aharon Robbins]

Hi.

Thank you for your mail.

While I agree that it would be nice if arrays were true first class
elements of the language, this is not likely to happen, for two
reasons.

1. It would be a very significant departure from historical practice
and the awk language as standardized by POSIX.

2. The current gawk code base is not really up to supporting this.

Thanks,

Arnold

> Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 11:46:29 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Charles Obler <address@hidden>
> Subject: gawk feature request: array assignment
> To: address@hidden
>
> Hello awk people -- 
>
> It would be very nice to be able to assign and return arrays.  Currently,
> when I attempt this, I get a fatal "attempt to use array in a scalar
> context" error message.
> 
> I'm attempting to make my awk program somewhat "object-oriented",
> with associative arrays taking the place of "objects" or "classes".
> Unfortunately, when I try to return or store one of these "objects",
> awk complains.
>
> E.g.: 
>
> vNaEl = ObjName( vName, vType, vStat)  # create a name object
> vNASu++                                # incr array subscripb
> vNArr[ vNASu] = vNaEl                  # save the object in the objects array
>
> The third statement kills awk.