awk close() bug?

[Mark Zimmermann]

I have a problem with 'awk' on my Sparcstation-1:  when I try to run an
awk program which writes more than about 10 files, awk fails.  (I am
careful to close files when I finish writing to them, so there are never
more than one or two open at a time, in theory.)  The identical awk
program works fine on a NeXT machine.  

The 'unbundle' example in Aho/Kernighan/Weinberger also fails.  It appears
to be the case that the awk 'close(fname)' function isn't really closing
the files.  Is this a known bug, is there a fix or workaround, is it just
me, should I be using 'gawk' (the GNU 'awk'), or what?  Tnx for advice!  -
^z - science at nems.dt.navy.mil

P.S.  if anybody has a pointer to a program to turn text which is in all
capital letters into an approximation of mixed-case text, please tell me