I've been trying to share a gawk script for doing some processing on a
Web page with a friend - it is theoretically cross-platform portable,
but she runs Windows and I don't. (I don't even know which version of
Windows she has; presumably the latest, whichever that is?)

She is having trouble in installing gawk on her computer. It looks as if
she needs to download GnuWin32 (or Cygwin?), but the downloads linked at
https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/gnuwin32/gawk/3.1.6-1/gawk-3.1.6-1-setup.exe
and
https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/ezwinports/gdb-12.1-w32-bin.zip
simply fail (and failed for me too when I tested them).

How does one set about running gawk under Windows nowadays? All the
references at http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/install.html look
worryingly ancient, and I know next to nothing about Windows software
installation myself, while she is a self-admitted 'tech novice'.

--
Igenlode Visit the Ivory Tower http://ivory.ueuo.com/Tower/

* Usenet: Warning, may contain Nuts *

The gnuwin32 version of gawk is ancient. Don't use it. Use the version
from ezwinports, which is what's supported under Windows by the GNU
developers.

This is corroborated by the gawk manual. See:
https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/PC-Binary-Installation.html

Cygwin is an alternative; it provides the possibility of a POSIX-style
environment under Windows, including gawk, but is probably more than
you want.

HTH,

Mack The Knife

In article <20220725060702.AA9491200D9@fleegle.mixmin.net>,
Igenlode Wordsmith <Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header@[127.1]> wrote:
>I've been trying to share a gawk script for doing some processing on a
>Web page with a friend - it is theoretically cross-platform portable,
>but she runs Windows and I don't. (I don't even know which version of
>Windows she has; presumably the latest, whichever that is?)
>
>She is having trouble in installing gawk on her computer. It looks as if
>she needs to download GnuWin32 (or Cygwin?), but the downloads linked at
>https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/gnuwin32/gawk/3.1.6-1/gawk-3.1.6-1-setup.exe
>and
>https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/ezwinports/gdb-12.1-w32-bin.zip
>simply fail (and failed for me too when I tested them).
>
>How does one set about running gawk under Windows nowadays? All the
>references at http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/install.html look
>worryingly ancient, and I know next to nothing about Windows software
>installation myself, while she is a self-admitted 'tech novice'.
>
>--
>Igenlode Visit the Ivory Tower http://ivory.ueuo.com/Tower/
>
> * Usenet: Warning, may contain Nuts *

Igenlode Wordsmith <Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header@[127.1]> writes:
>How does one set about running gawk under Windows nowadays?

Sorry for being vague, but it's a long time ago I did this:

The last time I did this, I used a Web search engine to find
ports of GNU tools to Windows. I found several different
collections based on different libraries, for example some
might have used Cygwin DLLs others not. I tried several
collections and then chose one that worked or worked best.

In article <20220725060702.AA9491200D9@fleegle.mixmin.net>,
Igenlode Wordsmith <Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header@[127.1]> wrote:
....
>How does one set about running gawk under Windows nowadays?

I recommend Cygwin, for a variety of reasons.

But you don't need to install all of Cygwin on the target machine. What I
do is to install Cygwin on my machine (actually, a Windows VM running under
Linux), so that I have access to all of the bells and whistles of Cygwin,
but for the target machine, I just figure out what I need to put on their
machine.

$ ldd gawk

will tell you which DLLs you need. I think it boils down to just:

1) gawk.exe
2) cygwin1.dll
3) cyggmp-10.dll
4) cygintl-8.dll
5) cygmpfr-6.dll
6) cygreadline7.dll
7) cygsigsegv-2.dll

Put all these files in a directory on the target machine that is in %PATH%
(Windows-speak) and it should "just work".

Now, I get that the undertone of this thread is that OP doesn't use Windows
on a day-to-day basis, which is understandable, but it would behoove him to
get some kind of Windows system going (like in a VM, as I do) or else it is
just going to be very difficult to get the remote user up and running.

--
The randomly chosen signature file that would have appeared here is more than 4
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On 2022-07-25, Kenny McCormack <gazelle@shell.xmission.com> wrote:
> In article <20220725060702.AA9491200D9@fleegle.mixmin.net>,
> Igenlode Wordsmith <Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header@[127.1]> wrote:
> ...
>>How does one set about running gawk under Windows nowadays?
>
> I recommend Cygwin, for a variety of reasons.
>
> But you don't need to install all of Cygwin on the target machine. What I
> do is to install Cygwin on my machine (actually, a Windows VM running under
> Linux), so that I have access to all of the bells and whistles of Cygwin,
> but for the target machine, I just figure out what I need to put on their
> machine.
>
> $ ldd gawk
>
> will tell you which DLLs you need. I think it boils down to just:
>
> 1) gawk.exe
> 2) cygwin1.dll
> 3) cyggmp-10.dll
> 4) cygintl-8.dll
> 5) cygmpfr-6.dll
> 6) cygreadline7.dll
> 7) cygsigsegv-2.dll

Speaking of which, I have been maintaining a project called Cygnal
for the past six years. The output of the project is a forked
cygwin1.dll that provides native-like behaviors.

https://www.kylheku.com/cygnal/

(I did try it Cygwin's Awk but not very extensively, and not recently.)

Under Cygnal, windows paths with drive letters and all work.

So does the "currently logged" drive concept; I made the otherwise POSIX
chdir() function associate a current working directory with drives,
so that accessing a file like "f:whatever.txt" could actually
refer to "f:\users\bob\whatever.txt".

> Put all these files in a directory on the target machine that is in %PATH%
> (Windows-speak) and it should "just work".

Speaking of PATH; Cygwin programs munge the PATH variable, turning it
into colon-separated. This confuses native Windows subprocesses.

In Cygnal, I fixed it; it uses the regular semicolon-separated PATH.
The PATH-driven execution under execvp and whatnot follows that
convention, and the rewriting of the environment variable is disabled.

Also, the system() function uses cmd.exe. What's more, if something
tries to exec "/bin/sh" "-c" "whatever", that gets rewritten to
"cmd.exe" "/c" "whatever": so that programs which implement system-like
functions using fork/exec or spawn aren't trying to execute a
nonexistent command interpreter. (This won't fix an application which
tries to execute a hard-coded Unix command, but it's useful for
interpreters which provide access to the system's command interpreter.)

So in theory, if you slide my cygwin1.dll under gawk.exe from Cygwin,
you should be able to do something like system("echo %PATH%")
or other Windows cmd.exe commands.

--
TXR Programming Language: http://nongnu.org/txr
Cygnal: Cygwin Native Application Library: http://kylheku.com/cygnal

In article <20220725064233.184@kylheku.com>,
Kaz Kylheku <480-992-1380@kylheku.com> wrote:
....
>Also, the system() function uses cmd.exe. What's more, if something
>tries to exec "/bin/sh" "-c" "whatever", that gets rewritten to
>"cmd.exe" "/c" "whatever": so that programs which implement system-like
>functions using fork/exec or spawn aren't trying to execute a
>nonexistent command interpreter.

Is that such a good idea? What is I *DO* have Cygwin's /bin/sh on my
system, and I *WANT* things to work like they do in Unix (e.g., I am using
Cygwin to *COMPILE* GAWK (as I have done in the past) ?

Surely, a blanket over-ride is heavy-handed...

Anyway, that said, I do admire your concept of Cygnal. I haven't actually
gotten around to trying it out yet, but will at some point.

As I've mentioned a few times already, I don't do enough Windows stuff
anymore to justify getting too involved in stuff like this.

--
Reading any post by Fred Hodgin, you're always faced with the choice of:
lunatic, moron, or troll.

I always try to be generous and give benefit of the doubt, by assuming troll.

On Monday, 25 July 2022 at 07:07:04 UTC+1, Igenlode Wordsmith wrote:
> How does one set about running gawk under Windows nowadays?

To use gawk on Windows with the minimum of fuss, try installing
gawk using the Scoop package manager (https://scoop.sh/).

Once you have scoop installed, which is a 5-minute job and requires
no administrator rights, "scoop install gawk" will have you up and
running straight away.

It is useful, but not required, to create the directory C:\lib\awk
to store gawk scripts, as this will be read as the default AWKPATH.

I have no affiliation with Scoop, but have used it very successfully.
At my place of work, the vast majority of people use Windows and
have no command line experience. However, those same people use
gawk applications at the PowerShell prompt with no problems.

In article <336969cb-bed0-4175-ab95-54c0c7f4a215n@googlegroups.com>,
Stuart Ferguson <stuart.fergs@gmail.com> wrote:
....
>have no command line experience. However, those same people use
>gawk applications at the PowerShell prompt with no problems.

Um, PowerShell *is* a command line.

Different from CMD.EXE, but still a command line.

--
The randomly chosen signature file that would have appeared here is more than 4
lines long. As such, it violates one or more Usenet RFCs. In order to remain
in compliance with said RFCs, the actual sig can be found at the following URL:
http://user.xmission.com/~gazelle/Sigs/IceCream

On 25 Jul 2022 Mack The Knife wrote:

>The gnuwin32 version of gawk is ancient. Don't use it. Use the version
>from ezwinports, which is what's supported under Windows by the GNU
>developers.

Thanks for the pointer that I need to focus my efforts on the ezwinports
site -- I continued to get UnacceptableType errors when attempting to
download anything there, but was able to get into the site by switching
to another browser, and to download something that says it is Gawk 5.1.1
(more modern than the most recent port available for my system!)

How one gets that downloaded content to work is of course another
question. (I know literally virtually nothing about software
installation under Windows - the last time I had to fiddle around with a
foreign filing system, it was writing BAT files for a pre-Windows
version of MS-DOS where you had to manually enter the system date before
running the singletasking software...)

Presumably once the files have been put in the proper locations you can
then invoke them from the command line -- however one manages to access
that from Windows!

Reading the small print, I have a nasty feeling that she won't be able
to open the required GNU C/C++ libraries, which are apparently tar.xz
files.

[snip]

>Cygwin is an alternative; it provides the possibility of a POSIX-style
>environment under Windows, including gawk, but is probably more than
>you want.

Definitely more than I can ask her to take on in order to test out a
simple gawk script, I think! Although by the looks of it, attempting to
get gawk running under Windows at all is going to be more complicated
than I can really expect her to handle :-(

--
Igenlode Visit the Ivory Tower http://ivory.ueuo.com/Tower/

* Never assume malice when ignorance is a possibility *

Igenlode Wordsmith <Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header@[127.1]> wrote:

> Definitely more than I can ask her to take on in order to test out a
> simple gawk script, I think! Although by the looks of it, attempting to
> get gawk running under Windows at all is going to be more complicated
> than I can really expect her to handle :-(

If you don't need gawk specifically, one of the simpler options which
doesn't seem to need extra libraries installed is this BusyBox port:

https://frippery.org/busybox/

You could e.g. rename busybox.exe to awk.exe to avoid having to run it
with "busybox awk".

-Rus.

On 25 Jul 2022 Stuart Ferguson wrote:

>On Monday, 25 July 2022 at 07:07:04 UTC+1, Igenlode Wordsmith wrote:
>
>> How does one set about running gawk under Windows nowadays?
>
>To use gawk on Windows with the minimum of fuss, try installing
>gawk using the Scoop package manager (https://scoop.sh/).
>
>Once you have scoop installed, which is a 5-minute job and requires
>no administrator rights, "scoop install gawk" will have you up and
>running straight away.
>
Thanks for the suggestion, which I have forwarded to my friend as a
solution that only involves installing *one* piece of software...
(although again, looking at the 'json' file for gawk, I think she might
need to do an 'install 7zip' first in order to be able to decompress the
files!)

After reading https://www.makeuseof.com/windows-install-scoop/ I would
have thought most Windows users would actually find a graphical
installer less intimidating than one that involves enabling a PowerShell
interface that gives you far-reaching access to the innards of your
computer, and then typing cryptic one-line instructions like
"iwr -useb get.scoop.sh | iex"

However, she seems quite sanguine at the prospect of doing all this
extra install work, which I had not expected :-)

--
Igenlode Visit the Ivory Tower http://ivory.ueuo.com/Tower/

- I don't want to 'fit in' any more... - That makes two of us!

On 26 Jul 2022 Russell Marks wrote:

>Igenlode Wordsmith <Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header@[127.1]> wrote:
>
>> Definitely more than I can ask her to take on in order to test out a
>> simple gawk script, I think! Although by the looks of it, attempting to
>> get gawk running under Windows at all is going to be more complicated
>> than I can really expect her to handle :-(
>
>If you don't need gawk specifically, one of the simpler options which
>doesn't seem to need extra libraries installed is this BusyBox port:
>
> https://frippery.org/busybox/

Thanks - an interesting suggestion, especially as I wasn't aware of
having any gawk-specific code.
However, a quick test using "gawk -c" for compatibility mode immediately
throws up 'strftime' as being a gawk extension, and as the whole script
is based heavily around checking formatted dates it looks as if I do
need gawk in particular. Which is worth knowing anyhow...

--
Igenlode Visit the Ivory Tower http://ivory.ueuo.com/Tower/

* Never assume malice when ignorance is a possibility *

In article <20220726094300.910641200F1@fleegle.mixmin.net>,
Igenlode Wordsmith <Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header@[127.1]> wrote:
....
>Thanks - an interesting suggestion, especially as I wasn't aware of
>having any gawk-specific code.
>
>However, a quick test using "gawk -c" for compatibility mode immediately
>throws up 'strftime' as being a gawk extension, and as the whole script
>is based heavily around checking formatted dates it looks as if I do
>need gawk in particular. Which is worth knowing anyhow...

Interestingly enough, I just tested busybox AWK on Linux, and it has
strftime(). Color me both surprised and impressed. In fact, though I
expected it to be pretty easy to find something that broke it, I was unable
to do it (in a very short/quick session of playing with it).

So, I'd give it a try.

P.S. I wouldn't be all that surprised if the AWK in busybox *was* (more or
less) gawk. Like, where else would they look?

P.P.S. OK, yeah, I just tested some more and (surprising absolutely no
one), it does not recognize the "-l" command line option, so you can't load
functions from a shared library, like you can in GAWK...

--
In Usenet, as in life, as you go through it, you will run into lots of nonsense.
Each time, you will have to decide from the following courses of action:
1) Argue with it or 2) Ignore it.
Experience shows that the later course is usually the best.

On 2022-07-26, Kenny McCormack <gazelle@shell.xmission.com> wrote:
> In article <20220726094300.910641200F1@fleegle.mixmin.net>,
> Igenlode Wordsmith <Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header@[127.1]> wrote:
> ...
>>Thanks - an interesting suggestion, especially as I wasn't aware of
>>having any gawk-specific code.
>>
>>However, a quick test using "gawk -c" for compatibility mode immediately
>>throws up 'strftime' as being a gawk extension, and as the whole script
>>is based heavily around checking formatted dates it looks as if I do
>>need gawk in particular. Which is worth knowing anyhow...
>
> Interestingly enough, I just tested busybox AWK on Linux, and it has
> strftime(). Color me both surprised and impressed. In fact, though I

Why; this is a a standard C library function dating back to ANSI C 89
(and beyond) with a fixed arity. Wrapping it in a programming language
interpreter that already wraps other library functions should about a 30
minute job, including documentation (which would just point the user
to the manual for strftime for the format codes).

> expected it to be pretty easy to find something that broke it, I was unable
> to do it (in a very short/quick session of playing with it).
>
> So, I'd give it a try.
>
> P.S. I wouldn't be all that surprised if the AWK in busybox *was* (more or
> less) gawk. Like, where else would they look?

The Awk in BusyBox is definitely not Gawk; and that sort of inclusion
would defeat the whole point of BusyBox.

The point of BusyBox is providing common utilities in a small space,
mainly for embedded systems. BusyBox compiles all the utilities into
a single executable.

Here is BusyBox on one Arm-based embedded system I'm working with:

# ls -l /bin/busybox.nosuid
-rwxrwxr-x 1 1000 1000 1052020 Jul 22 23:36 /bin/busybox.nosuid

It's about a megabyte, which contains all the utilities BusyBox
provides, including the shell and Awk.

GNU Awk alone would probably take up something like 80% of that size.

Not everything in BusyBox is original. For instance, regarding the
shell, the source tree contains the ports of two shells: ash
(the Almquist shell) and something called hush. GNU Bash would not
be practical.

BusyBox Awk seems original, though. Oh look, by someone with
an Ukrainian e-mail address:

/*
* awk implementation for busybox
*
* Copyright (C) 2002 by Dmitry Zakharov <dmit@crp.bank.gov.ua>
*
* Licensed under GPLv2 or later, see file LICENSE in this source tree.
*/

--
TXR Programming Language: http://nongnu.org/txr
Cygnal: Cygwin Native Application Library: http://kylheku.com/cygnal

On 26 Jul 2022 Kaz Kylheku wrote:

>On 2022-07-26, Kenny McCormack <gazelle@shell.xmission.com> wrote:
>> In article <20220726094300.910641200F1@fleegle.mixmin.net>,
>> Igenlode Wordsmith <Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header@[127.1]> wrote:
>> ...
>>>Thanks - an interesting suggestion, especially as I wasn't aware of
>>>having any gawk-specific code.
>>>
>>>However, a quick test using "gawk -c" for compatibility mode immediately
>>>throws up 'strftime' as being a gawk extension, and as the whole script
>>>is based heavily around checking formatted dates it looks as if I do
>>>need gawk in particular. Which is worth knowing anyhow...
>>
>> Interestingly enough, I just tested busybox AWK on Linux, and it has
>> strftime(). Color me both surprised and impressed. In fact, though I
>
>Why; this is a a standard C library function dating back to ANSI C 89
>(and beyond) with a fixed arity. Wrapping it in a programming language
>interpreter that already wraps other library functions should about a 30
>minute job, including documentation (which would just point the user
>to the manual for strftime for the format codes).

[snip]

Well, I ran the --lint option over my script, and it didn't highlight
anything other than strftime() as a gawk extension... although just from
a manual scan I can see that I used 'nextfile', and *that* is listed as
being available in gawk only. So I'm not sure how far the lint results
are to be relied upon :-(

Otherwise a small self-contained implementation sounds like exactly what
I am looking for...

(I could post the entire script here to see if anyone can spot anything
else. But it's embarrassingly spaghetti-fied...)

>The Awk in BusyBox is definitely not Gawk; and that sort of inclusion
>would defeat the whole point of BusyBox.
>
>The point of BusyBox is providing common utilities in a small space,
>mainly for embedded systems. BusyBox compiles all the utilities into
>a single executable.

I found a mention of Busybox awk in the page on Other Versions, where it
is described as "a full implementation of POSIX awk":
https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/Other-Versions.html

Testing with the --posix option doesn't throw up anything other than
strftime, which ironically Busybox awk apparently does support.

[Edit: assuming this is in fact the Busybox awk source code, the list
of keywords in static const char tokenlist[] includes both 'strftime'
and 'nextfile' https://github.com/brgl/busybox/blob/master/editors/awk.c
]

>
>Here is BusyBox on one Arm-based embedded system I'm working with:
>
># ls -l /bin/busybox.nosuid
>-rwxrwxr-x 1 1000 1000 1052020 Jul 22 23:36 /bin/busybox.nosuid
>
>It's about a megabyte, which contains all the utilities BusyBox
>provides, including the shell and Awk.
>
>GNU Awk alone would probably take up something like 80% of that size.

My copy of gawk is 1326Kb as a stand-alone file - the binaries directory
in one of the Windows distributions I downloaded last night was 5Mb.

--
Igenlode Visit the Ivory Tower http://ivory.ueuo.com/Tower/

Those jaded in their emotions demand monstrous things to arouse them

On 26.07.2022 11:05, Igenlode Wordsmith wrote:
>
> Thanks - an interesting suggestion, especially as I wasn't aware of
> having any gawk-specific code.
> However, a quick test using "gawk -c" for compatibility mode immediately
> throws up 'strftime' as being a gawk extension, and as the whole script
> is based heavily around checking formatted dates it looks as if I do
> need gawk in particular. Which is worth knowing anyhow...

Yes, strftime is a GNU Awk extension (which may be available in other
awk versions or not). You still have to be careful since there's no
guaranteed set of supported time format specifiers; it depends on the
platform, which version of POSIX, and the underlying libraries. And
the documentation of the underlying strftime library function may not
even reflect what works with the awk on the same platform (been there).
There's a huge set of commonly supported format specifiers, but be
careful with some of the exotic ones; tests before going in production
with your programs help.

Janis

In article <20220727002858.8BAA01200B2@fleegle.mixmin.net>,
Igenlode Wordsmith <Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header@[127.1]> wrote:
>Well, I ran the --lint option over my script, and it didn't highlight
>anything other than strftime() as a gawk extension... although just from
>a manual scan I can see that I used 'nextfile', and *that* is listed as
>being available in gawk only. So I'm not sure how far the lint results
>are to be relied upon :-(

It looks like you're looking at a (very) old manual. nextfile was
accepted by the POSIX committee in 2012 for inclusion into awk
and should be in the current standard (from 2017 or 2018). This is the
reason --lint doesn't complain. At the very least gawk, mawk and
The One True Awk implement nextfile. Apparently current busybox awk
does as well.

HTH,

Mack The Knife