Greetings all.

This note announces the next release of GNU Awk: version 5.1.1.

The following files may be retrieved via HTTPS from
https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gawk:

-rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 6257874 Oct 28 20:22 gawk-5.1.1.tar.gz
-rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 3113754 Oct 28 20:22 gawk-5.1.1.tar.lz
-rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 3250860 Oct 28 20:22 gawk-5.1.1.tar.xz

This is a bug-fix release. The relevant part of the NEWS file
is appended below.

This release represents a lot of very hard work by a number of people.
I thank them all for their contributions, I could not have done it
by myself.

Differences from gawk 5.1.0 are available in this file:

-rw-r--r-- 1 arnold arnold 1454644 Oct 28 20:54 gawk-5.1.0-5.1.1.diff.gz

The .diff file is a shell script that should be executed in the gawk-5.1.0
source directory.

The online documentation on the GNU web site has been updated as well.
In particular, EVERYONE should read the newly expanded section on
reporting bugs. Start here:

https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/Bugs.html

The usual GNU build incantation should be used:

tar -xpvzf gawk-5.1.1.tar.gz
cd gawk-5.1.1
./configure && make && make check

Bug reports should be sent to bug-gawk@gnu.org.

Requests for help (and everything else that isn't a bug report!) should
be sent to help-gawk@gnu.org.

Enjoy!

Arnold Robbins (on behalf of all the gawk developers)
arnold@skeeve.com
------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright (C) 2019, 2020, 2021 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
notice and this notice are preserved.

Changes from 5.1.0 to 5.1.1
---------------------------

1. Infrastructure upgrades: Bison 3.8, Gettext 0.20.2, Automake 1.16.4,
and (will wonders never cease) Autoconf 2.71.

2. asort and asorti now allow FUNCTAB and SYMTAB as the first argument if a
second destination array is supplied. Similarly, using either array as
the second argument is now a fatal error. Additionally, using either
array as the destination for split(), match(), etc. also causes a
fatal error.

3. The new -I/--trace option prints a trace of the byte codes as they
are executed.

4. A number of subtle bugs relating to MPFR mode that caused differences
between regular operation and MPFR mode have been fixed.

5. The API now handles MPFR/GMP values slightly differently, requiring
different memory management for those values. See the manual for the
details if you have an extension using those values. As a result,
the minor version was incremented.

6. $0 and the fields are now cleared before starting a BEGINFILE rule.

7. The duplication of m4 and build-aux directories between the main
directory and the extension directory has been removed. This
simplifies the distribution.

8. The test suite has been improved, making it easier to run the entire
suite with -M. Use `GAWK_TEST_ARGS=-M make check' to do so.

9. Profiling and pretty-printing output has been modified slightly so
that functions are presented in a reasonable order with respect
to the namespaces that contain them.

10. Several example programs in the manual have been updated to their
modern POSIX equivalents.

11. A number of examples in doc/gawkinet.texi have been updated for
current times. Thanks to Juergen Kahrs for the work.

12. Handling of Infinity and NaN values has been improved.

13. There has been a general tightening up of the use of const and
of types.

14. The "no effect" lint warnings have been fixed up and now behave
more sanely.

15. The manual has been updated with much more information about what is
and is not a bug, and the changes in the gawk mailing lists.

16. The behavior of strongly-typed regexp constants when passed as the
third argument to sub() or gsub() has been clarified in the code and
in the manual.

17. Similar to item #4 above, division by zero is now fatal in MPFR
mode, as it is in regular mode.

18. There have been numerous minor code cleanups and bug fixes. See the
ChangeLog for details.
--
Aharon (Arnold) Robbins arnold AT skeeve DOT com