awk oddity: 2.8BSD vs. ULTRIX

[David P Huelsbeck]

In article <268 at uwmacc.UUCP> jwp at uwmacc.UUCP (Jeffrey W Percival) writes:
>Here's a curiosity I hope someone can help me on.
>I have a file called "cmd" with this line:
>
>    { $1 = $2 + $3 } { print $0 }
>
>and a file called "data" with this line:
>
>    1 1 1 1
>
>When I type this command:
>
>    awk -f cmd data
>
>I get these responses:
>
>    2 1 1 1                 on 2.8BSD on an 11/70
>
>and
>
>    1 1 1 1                 on ULTRIX 32m v. 1.1 on a MicroVax II
>                            and on 4.2BSD on a Vax 780.
>
>Why does awk vary in its response?
>-- 
>	Jeff Percival ...!uwvax!uwmacc!sal70!jwp or ...!uwmacc!jwp

Because awk under 4.2 is broken and ULTRIX works too much the same.
This is fixed in 4.3 and SysV.

	dph at lanl.arpa