AWK system and close functions

[Randy Sebra <randy>]

Hello,

     I have tried unsuccessfully to use the 'system' and 'close'
functions in an AWK script.  I have tried this on a Gould 9080, Pyramid
MIS-4, and an Alliant FX/8 on their ports of UNIX.  None seems to give
the results I would expect from reading the book "The AWK Programming
Language" by A,W,and K.  The following examples :

awk '{ system("ls -lg /etc") }' /dev/null
awk '{ system("ls -lg /etc > /tmp/list") }' /dev/null

are simple one-liners which produce no output/results, and the function
does not work any better in a more complicated script.  Also surprising
is that even though nothing is accomplished in either, I do not get an
error message which would indicate that at least the syntax is correct.

     Similarily, the close() function does not(apparently) do anything
as per this example :

print $0 > "foofile"
...
close("foofile")

which was used in order to keep under the limit of 10 open files, but
the program still bombs with the message :

awk: too many output files 10
 record number 11

     I am I missing something really elemental here??

Randy Sebra
Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity
Attn: AMXSY-DA
Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland 21005-5071
Phone: (301) 278-6679 (AV) 298-6679