Re: [9front] [PATCH] awk(1): quote argument for -v option

[Stanley Lieber <sl@stanleylieber.com>]

this is an rc quirk, not related to awk. for example, what if you run awk from the ape/sh (or some other) shell?

on the other hand, obviously in almost every case the user will be launching awk from rc.

still, i do not think we need to document rc quoting behavior in every man page because ultimately the man page is for the program in question, while rc quoting is something a 9front user will have to come to terms with early in their career as a 9front.

in summary, rc’s quoting is not a universal condition, so it should remain implied rather than explicit in man pages that are not the rc man page.

sl

> On Nov 29, 2022, at 7:11 AM, Anders Damsgaard <anders@adamsgaard.dk> wrote:
> 
> Dear all,
> 
> Running awk from rc, I found that I need to quote the arguments to awk's
> -v option, as in:
> 
>    awk -v 'myvar=asdf' 'BEGIN{print myvar}'
> 
> However, the awk man page specifies this without quotes as "awk -v
> myvar=asdf".  I now realize that it will not work without quotes because
> rc tries to interpret the assignment operator.
> 
> Is this just a beginner mistake, being used to unix behavior, or worth
> documenting as in the patch below?
> 
> Thanks, Anders
> 
> 
> diff ff2ebe6cfdacd890a74a6d2f9b0acd062d2633b7 uncommitted
> --- a/sys/man/1/awk
> +++ b/sys/man/1/awk
> @@ -23,7 +23,7 @@
> ]
> [
> .B -v
> -.I var=value
> +.I 'var=value'
> ]
> [
> .B -f
> @@ -58,13 +58,13 @@
> Any
> .IR file
> of the form
> -.I var=value
> +.I 'var=value'
> is treated as an assignment, not a file name,
> and is executed at the time it would have been opened if it were a file name.
> The option
> .B -v
> followed by
> -.I var=value
> +.I 'var=value'
> is an assignment to be done before the program
> is executed;
> any number of
>