Message-Id: <199801120920.KAA24820@sun4nl.NL.net>
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 10:38:00 +0100
From: Rob den Boer <rob DOT den DOT boer AT derijke DOT nl>
Subject: DJGPP gawk peculiarity
To: djgpp <djgpp AT delorie DOT com>
Precedence: bulk


Weiqi Gao <weiqigao AT a DOT crl DOT com> wrote:

>One of my coworkers showed me a peculiar behavior of the DJGPP awk:
>C:\TEMP> cat junk
>123 456

>C:\> awk 'length($1) < 2 {print $1}' junk
>123
>What am I missing here?

The basics of awk ;-))
awk 'runs' through the stdin executing between {}, in your case {print   
$1}, which prints the first field of every record.
You placed 'length($1)<2'  before {} which becomes a search condition.
What you probably mean is { print length($1) }

regards
Rob den Boer