Awk bug+fix -- Do Not Install This "Fix"!

[Guido van Rossum]

Eh, excuse me, but I don't think it is a bug in Awk that files are not
closed after they have been written.  It is a *feature*.  Maybe the
documentation doesn't state it well, but the idea is that something like
	awk '/pattern/ { print > "file" }'
is equivalent to
	grep pattern >file
and similar for the pipe (|) notation.  So there is more to it than just
efficiency.  (Note that the 'w' command of Sed has the same semantics --
different from Ed but much more useful in a stream editing environment.)
    I think this is a nice feature, wouldn't want to miss it, and it
shouldn't be disabled by the "fix" suggested by Ken Greer.  (Actually, I
think I've seen exactly the same problem reported before in this newsgroup.)

Guido (not too awkward) van Rossum, CWI, Amsterdam         guido @ mcvax