**** NOTE: The texinfo manual is being edited and will be restored
**** to the distribution shortly after the release.	

README:

This is GNU Awk 2.13. It should be upwardly compatible with the
System V Release 4 awk.  It is almost completely compliant with draft 11
of POSIX 1003.2.

This release is essentially a bug fix and tuning release.

See the installation instructions, below.

Known problems are given in the PROBLEMS file.  Work to be done is
described briefly in the FUTURES file.  Verified ports are listed in
the PORTS file.  Please read the LIMITATIONS and ACKNOWLEDGMENT files.

The gawk.texinfo included in this release is out of date with respect to
the code.  An updated manual will be released soon after the code.
It can be changed into an info file (included) with
makeinfo or with texinfo-format-buffer in emacs without changes.

The man page is up to date.
If you do not have nroff or troff, you can use `awf' included in
the test suite to format the manual page with only a few small problems.

Summary of Changes from 2.11.1

Configuration is via a config file which is used by the "mkconf" script
to create Makefile and config.h.  Sample configuration files for various systems
are included in the config directory.

Non-POSIX options are arguments to -W; all non-compliant options are
deprecated.

New option "-W lint" to do extra checking.  The coverage
will expand a bit in future releases.

Numeric to string conversion is done via the builtin variable CONVFMT
rather than OFMT, in conformance with the POSIX draft standard.  It is
initialized with the same value as OFMT, so the vast majority of programs
should see no change in behaviour.

Awk program source no longer has any line length limits.

New builtin functions systime() and strftime() provided.

Error messages improved.

FIELDWIDTHS variable gives a space-separated list of numbers specifying the
widths of input fields, to accomodate fixed-format input.

Numerous bug fixes and portability improvements.

Performance is about 50% better than 2.11.1, although the improvements
are uneven.

The code has been extensively tested with test coverage monitored.
A test suite is now included.  This will be expanded in future releases.

INSTALLATION:

The Makefile may need some tailoring.  The only changes necessary should
be to change installation targets or to change compiler flags.
The changes to make in the Makefile are commented and should be obvious.

All other changes should be made in a config file.  Samples for
various systems are included in the config directory.  Starting with
2.11, our intent has been to make the code conform to standards (ANSI,
POSIX, SVID, in that order) whenever possible, and to not penalize
standard conforming systems.  We have included substitute versions of
routines not universally available.  Simply add the appropriate define
for the missing feature(s) on your system.

If you have neither bison nor yacc, use the awk.tab.c file here.  It was
generated with bison, and should have no AT&T code in it.  (Note that
modifying awk.y without bison or yacc will be difficult, at best.  You might
want to get a copy of bison from the FSF too.)

If no config file is included for your system,  start by copying one
for a similar system.  One way of determining the defines needed is to
try to load gawk with nothing defined and see what routines are
unresolved by the loader.  This should give you a good idea of how to
proceed.  We would like to receive a copy of any new config files.

If you have an MS-DOS system, use the stuff in the pc directory.
For an Atari theere is an atari directory and similarly one for VMS.

After successful compilation, do 'make test' to run a small test suite.
There should be no output from the 'cmp' invocations.  If there is, please
investigate and report the problem.  More extensive testing can be invoked
with 'make bigtest'.  There are many interesting programs in the test suite!

PRINTING THE MANUAL

The 'support' directory contains texinfo.tex 2.40, which will be necessary
for printing the manual, and the texindex.c program from the emacs distribution
which is also necessary.  See the makefile for the steps needed to get a
DVI file from the manual.

CAVEATS

The existence of a patchlevel.h file does *N*O*T* imply a commitment on
our part to issue bug fixes or patches.  It is there in case we should
decide to do so.

BUG REPORTS AND FIXES:

Please coordinate changes through David Trueman and/or Arnold Robbins.

David Trueman
Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Computing Science,
Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

UUCP		{uunet utai watmath}!dalcs!david
INTERNET	david@cs.dal.ca

Arnold Robbins
1736 Reindeer Drive
Atlanta, GA, 30329, USA

INTERNET:	arnold@skeeve.atl.ga.us
UUCP:		{ gatech, emory, emoryu1 }!skeeve!arnold
