This distribution of GAWK V2.15.5 was packaged by Hunter Goatley on 20-MAY-1994. It differs from Pat's original version, available on hamlet.caltech.edu, only in that a new MMS file, [.SRC.VMS]HUNTER.MMS has been added and the VMS binaries have been left in [.VMS_BINARIES] instead of in [.OBJ]. If you don't want to recompile, just go to [.VMS_BINARIES] and do: $ @LINK ================================================================================ May 19, 1994 This is GAWK version 2.15.5, released May, 1994. GAWK is the Free Software Foundation's implementation of the ``awk'' programming language. This version of GAWK is more robust than the previous ones (2.15.4, Feb., 1994; 2.14, Nov., 1992; 2.13.2, July, 1991; 2.11.1, Fall, 1989), but might possibly be somewhat slower due to the extra work now being performed in order to convert and format numbers more carefully. 'awk' is an interpretive programming language specializing in pattern matching and text reformatting; it's a standardly available tool on Unix systems. Programs as short as a single line can perform useful tasks. Several examples are contained in _The_GAWK_Manual_. GAWK was compiled using VAX C V3.2 on a VMS V5.5-2 system, then linked against VAX/VMS V5.1-1 run-time libraries. It should be usable as-is on VMS V5.1 and up. The sources can be recompiled with VAX C (version 2.3 or later), with GNU C (tested using 1.42 and 2.5.7), or DEC C, for VAX/VMS, Alpha/VMS (aka OpenVMS AXP), or VMS POSIX. It can also be built as-is for a variety of Unix platforms, AtariSTs running TOS, or PCs and compatibles running MSDOS. Documentation (_The_GAWK_Manual_, in TeX format) is in source file [.src]gawk.texi. The formatted output is roughly 210 pages. There is also a separate VMS help entry (found in [.src.vms]gawk.hlp) which tries to summarize both the awk language and the gawk implementation. This software distribution is covered by the GNU Public License; see the file COPYING in [.src]. The files in [.src...] are the complete gawk-2.15.5.tar distribution. The files in [.obj] are the files created while building the program. Pat Rankin Pactech Data and Research, Inc c/o Environmental Quality Laboratory, Caltech Internet: rankin@eql.caltech.edu Bitnet: rankin%eql@HAMLET.bitnet NSI/DECnet: EQL::RANKIN (EQL==14.970 or 15306)