Passing variables to gawk

[Mike McManus]

I want to pass variables to a gawk program via the command line.  According to
the man page, all you need do is call gawk with <var>=<value> instead of file
names:

gawk -f foo.awk a=1 b=2 c=3 infile > outfile

and the variables a,b,c will be free to use in foo.awk (the gawk script), and
will be assigned the values 1,2,3.  I can't seem to get this to work!  When I
print the value of the variables inside a BEGIN{} block in foo.awk, they are all
set to 0.  Anybody have any experience with this that they'd like to share?

Thanks!
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Mike McManus (mikemc at ncr-fc.FtCollins.ncr.com)  
NCR Microelectronics                
2001 Danfield Ct.                   ncr-fc!mikemc at ncr-sd.sandiego.ncr.com, or
Ft. Collins,  Colorado              ncr-fc!mikemc at ccncsu.colostate.edu, or
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