Re: bin/39002: harmful AWK extension: non-portable escaped character

[uwe%stderr.spb.ru@localhost (Valeriy E. Ushakov)]

Aleksey Cheusov <cheusov%tut.by@localhost> wrote:

>> i.e. it's undefined behavior and there's clearly no "standard
>> behavior" per se.
> 
> As I already said NO. It is "undefined behaviour" for regexps but not
> for constant strings.

Is it?

Gawk manual says that "If you place a backslash in a string constant
before something that is not one of the characters listed above, POSIX
awk purposely leaves what happens as /undefined/." (emphasis mine)

While comp.lang.awk FAQ doesn't talk directly about this, Q21 has
examples like the following one:

    "\(N|S\)\(E|W\)" => /(N|S)(E|W)/ (correct) (NOTE:  all \ had no effect)

note the "NOTE" comment.


PS: It would have helped your cause tremendously if you had stopped
flaming people.  You start with calling few decades of history
"harmful AWK extension" ("extenstion"?!) - which immediately sets
wrong tone for the whole discussion - and follow up with

| Please, do not repeat this $%^& "nawk is the only true awk...and
| bla-bla-bla".  "Long standing trandition" is bad argument here. 

After successfully alienating and antagonizing your audience, don't be
surprised people are not interested in hearing whatever rational
argument you might actually have there.

SY, Uwe
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