Re: [9fans] Ports tree for Plan 9

[erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>]

On Sat May 30 13:36:14 PDT 2015, sl@9front.org wrote:
> On May 30, 2015, at 11:54 AM, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
>
> >> I would very much like to see this fast and conformant, so that APE
> >> awk can be thrown in the trash.
> >
> > i don't understand this.  awk is bwk's ota source, with some minor tweaks to fit the
> > environment.  it works well, and allows portable awk to be written.  can you
> > explain what is to be gained by a re do?  i don't think "doesn't use ape" per ce
> > is a good argument.  it would have to be explained what this enables.  i can't see
> > that part.
> >
> > - erik
>
> if i understood correctly, the major reasons were better unicode handling and not using sh for system().

using rc instead of /bin/ape/sh is a a bind away.  similarly, adding %C to awk is also trivial.
but there are compatability tradeoffs.  (i used rune/uconv (see rune(1),
http://sources.9atom.org/magic/man2html/1/rune)

this doesn't seem like motiviation to rewrite awk.  there must be another reason?

by the way, thinking a bit bigger, what i'd like to see is x, where x is to awk as rc is to the
bourne shell.

- erik