some questions about awk

[alan at herman.UUCP]

I am trying to write an application using "awk" and have run into a
couple of problems:

1. Is there any way to send control codes to the printer from within
   an "awk" program. I have not been able to find any way to output
   binary, i.e. non-ascii, data from an "awk" program. Both print
   and printf insist on converting to ascii.

2. Is there a way to read data from stdin? My application is interactive
   in that it must receive direction from the user via the keyboard
   at various points. The shell "read" command capability would be
   sufficient.

3. Is there a way to execute shell commands?

In advance, thanks for your help.
-- 
Al Kiecker			UUCP: 	ihnp4!clyde!herman!alan
Unisys - Computer Systems Div.		meccts!herman!alan
Eagan,MN			AT&T:	(612)681-6475