Re: [9fans] awk, not utf aware...

[Uriel <uriel99@gmail.com>]

None of those issues are specific to AWK, they apply just as well to
sed(1) or any program dealing with regexps. I think the plan9 tools
demonstrate that it is not so hard to find a 'good enough' solution;
and the lunix locale debacle demonstrate that if you want to get it
'right' you will end up with a nightmare.

The problem with awk is that it is not a native plan9 app, and it
simian nature shows in too many places. For example system() and | are
badly broken:

%  echo |awk '{print |"echo $KSH_VERSION"}'
@(#)PD KSH v5.2.14 99/07/13.2

Boyd made a native port of awk that fixed most (all?) of this issues,
it can be found somewhere in his contrib dir but I don't think is
production-ready.

uriel

On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 4:54 PM, Sape Mullender
<sape@plan9.bell-labs.com> wrote:
> > There is split and other functions,
>  > for example:
>  >
>  > toupper("aí")
>  > gives
>  > Aí
>  >
>  > My guess is that there are many more little (or not) corners where it
>  > doesn't work.
>
>  Yes, and then there is locale: does [a-z] include ij when you run it
>  in Holland (it should)?  Does it include á, è, ô in France (it should)?
>  Does it include ø, å in Norway (it should not)?  And what happens when
>  you evaluate "è" < "o" (it depends)?
>
>  Fixing awk is much harder than anyone things.  I had a chat about it with
>  Brian Kernighan and he says he's been thinking about fixing awk for a
>  long time, but that it really is a hard problem.
>
>         Sape
>
>