From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

I've been trying to share a gawk script for doing some processing on a
Web page with a friend - it is theoretically cross-platform portable,
but she runs Windows and I don't. (I don't even know which version of
Windows she has; presumably the latest, whichever that is?)

She is having trouble in installing gawk on her computer. It looks as if
she needs to download GnuWin32 (or Cygwin?), but the downloads linked at https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/gnuwin32/gawk/3.1.6-1/gawk-3.1.6-1-setup.exe
and
https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/ezwinports/gdb-12.1-w32-bin.zip simply fail (and failed for me too when I tested them).

How does one set about running gawk under Windows nowadays? All the
references at http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/install.html look
worryingly ancient, and I know next to nothing about Windows software installation myself, while she is a self-admitted 'tech novice'.
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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

The gnuwin32 version of gawk is ancient. Don't use it. Use the version
from ezwinports, which is what's supported under Windows by the GNU
developers.

This is corroborated by the gawk manual. See: https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/PC-Binary-Installation.html

Cygwin is an alternative; it provides the possibility of a POSIX-style environment under Windows, including gawk, but is probably more than
you want.

HTH,

Mack The Knife

In article <20220725060702.AA9491200D9@fleegle.mixmin.net>,
Igenlode Wordsmith <Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header@[127.1]> wrote:

I've been trying to share a gawk script for doing some processing on a
Web page with a friend - it is theoretically cross-platform portable,
but she runs Windows and I don't. (I don't even know which version of
Windows she has; presumably the latest, whichever that is?)

She is having trouble in installing gawk on her computer. It looks as if
she needs to download GnuWin32 (or Cygwin?), but the downloads linked at >https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/gnuwin32/gawk/3.1.6-1/gawk-3.1.6-1-setup.exe
and
https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/ezwinports/gdb-12.1-w32-bin.zip >simply fail (and failed for me too when I tested them).

How does one set about running gawk under Windows nowadays? All the >references at http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/install.html look
worryingly ancient, and I know next to nothing about Windows software >installation myself, while she is a self-admitted 'tech novice'.

--
Igenlode Visit the Ivory Tower http://ivory.ueuo.com/Tower/

* Usenet: Warning, may contain Nuts *

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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

Igenlode Wordsmith <Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header@[127.1]> writes:

How does one set about running gawk under Windows nowadays?

Sorry for being vague, but it's a long time ago I did this:

The last time I did this, I used a Web search engine to find
ports of GNU tools to Windows. I found several different
collections based on different libraries, for example some
might have used Cygwin DLLs others not. I tried several
collections and then chose one that worked or worked best.


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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

In article <20220725060702.AA9491200D9@fleegle.mixmin.net>,
Igenlode Wordsmith <Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header@[127.1]> wrote:
...

How does one set about running gawk under Windows nowadays?

I recommend Cygwin, for a variety of reasons.

But you don't need to install all of Cygwin on the target machine. What I
do is to install Cygwin on my machine (actually, a Windows VM running under Linux), so that I have access to all of the bells and whistles of Cygwin,
but for the target machine, I just figure out what I need to put on their machine.

$ ldd gawk

will tell you which DLLs you need. I think it boils down to just:

1) gawk.exe
2) cygwin1.dll
3) cyggmp-10.dll
4) cygintl-8.dll
5) cygmpfr-6.dll
6) cygreadline7.dll
7) cygsigsegv-2.dll

Put all these files in a directory on the target machine that is in %PATH% (Windows-speak) and it should "just work".

Now, I get that the undertone of this thread is that OP doesn't use Windows
on a day-to-day basis, which is understandable, but it would behoove him to
get some kind of Windows system going (like in a VM, as I do) or else it is just going to be very difficult to get the remote user up and running.
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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

On 2022-07-25, Kenny McCormack <gazelle@shell.xmission.com> wrote:

In article <20220725060702.AA9491200D9@fleegle.mixmin.net>,
Igenlode Wordsmith <Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header@[127.1]> wrote:
...

How does one set about running gawk under Windows nowadays?

I recommend Cygwin, for a variety of reasons.

But you don't need to install all of Cygwin on the target machine. What I
do is to install Cygwin on my machine (actually, a Windows VM running under Linux), so that I have access to all of the bells and whistles of Cygwin,
but for the target machine, I just figure out what I need to put on their machine.

$ ldd gawk

will tell you which DLLs you need. I think it boils down to just:

1) gawk.exe
2) cygwin1.dll
3) cyggmp-10.dll
4) cygintl-8.dll
5) cygmpfr-6.dll
6) cygreadline7.dll
7) cygsigsegv-2.dll

Speaking of which, I have been maintaining a project called Cygnal
for the past six years. The output of the project is a forked
cygwin1.dll that provides native-like behaviors.

https://www.kylheku.com/cygnal/

(I did try it Cygwin's Awk but not very extensively, and not recently.)

Under Cygnal, windows paths with drive letters and all work.

So does the "currently logged" drive concept; I made the otherwise POSIX chdir() function associate a current working directory with drives,
so that accessing a file like "f:whatever.txt" could actually
refer to "f:\users\bob\whatever.txt".

Put all these files in a directory on the target machine that is in %PATH% (Windows-speak) and it should "just work".

Speaking of PATH; Cygwin programs munge the PATH variable, turning it
into colon-separated. This confuses native Windows subprocesses.

In Cygnal, I fixed it; it uses the regular semicolon-separated PATH.
The PATH-driven execution under execvp and whatnot follows that
convention, and the rewriting of the environment variable is disabled.

Also, the system() function uses cmd.exe. What's more, if something
tries to exec "/bin/sh" "-c" "whatever", that gets rewritten to
"cmd.exe" "/c" "whatever": so that programs which implement system-like functions using fork/exec or spawn aren't trying to execute a
nonexistent command interpreter. (This won't fix an application which
tries to execute a hard-coded Unix command, but it's useful for
interpreters which provide access to the system's command interpreter.)

So in theory, if you slide my cygwin1.dll under gawk.exe from Cygwin,
you should be able to do something like system("echo %PATH%")
or other Windows cmd.exe commands.
--
TXR Programming Language: http://nongnu.org/txr
Cygnal: Cygwin Native Application Library: http://kylheku.com/cygnal
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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

In article <20220725064233.184@kylheku.com>,
Kaz Kylheku <480-992-1380@kylheku.com> wrote:
...

Also, the system() function uses cmd.exe. What's more, if something
tries to exec "/bin/sh" "-c" "whatever", that gets rewritten to
"cmd.exe" "/c" "whatever": so that programs which implement system-like >functions using fork/exec or spawn aren't trying to execute a
nonexistent command interpreter.

Is that such a good idea? What is I *DO* have Cygwin's /bin/sh on my
system, and I *WANT* things to work like they do in Unix (e.g., I am using Cygwin to *COMPILE* GAWK (as I have done in the past) ?

Surely, a blanket over-ride is heavy-handed...

Anyway, that said, I do admire your concept of Cygnal. I haven't actually gotten around to trying it out yet, but will at some point.

As I've mentioned a few times already, I don't do enough Windows stuff
anymore to justify getting too involved in stuff like this.
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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

On Monday, 25 July 2022 at 07:07:04 UTC+1, Igenlode Wordsmith wrote:

How does one set about running gawk under Windows nowadays?

To use gawk on Windows with the minimum of fuss, try installing
gawk using the Scoop package manager (https://scoop.sh/).

Once you have scoop installed, which is a 5-minute job and requires
no administrator rights, "scoop install gawk" will have you up and
running straight away.

It is useful, but not required, to create the directory C:\lib\awk
to store gawk scripts, as this will be read as the default AWKPATH.

I have no affiliation with Scoop, but have used it very successfully.
At my place of work, the vast majority of people use Windows and
have no command line experience. However, those same people use
gawk applications at the PowerShell prompt with no problems.
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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

In article <336969cb-bed0-4175-ab95-54c0c7f4a215n@googlegroups.com>,
Stuart Ferguson <stuart.fergs@gmail.com> wrote:
...

have no command line experience. However, those same people use
gawk applications at the PowerShell prompt with no problems.

Um, PowerShell *is* a command line.

Different from CMD.EXE, but still a command line.
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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

On 25 Jul 2022 Mack The Knife wrote:

The gnuwin32 version of gawk is ancient. Don't use it. Use the version
from ezwinports, which is what's supported under Windows by the GNU >developers.

Thanks for the pointer that I need to focus my efforts on the ezwinports
site -- I continued to get UnacceptableType errors when attempting to
download anything there, but was able to get into the site by switching
to another browser, and to download something that says it is Gawk 5.1.1
(more modern than the most recent port available for my system!)

How one gets that downloaded content to work is of course another
question. (I know literally virtually nothing about software
installation under Windows - the last time I had to fiddle around with a foreign filing system, it was writing BAT files for a pre-Windows
version of MS-DOS where you had to manually enter the system date before running the singletasking software...)

Presumably once the files have been put in the proper locations you can
then invoke them from the command line -- however one manages to access
that from Windows!

Reading the small print, I have a nasty feeling that she won't be able
to open the required GNU C/C++ libraries, which are apparently tar.xz
files.

[snip]

Cygwin is an alternative; it provides the possibility of a POSIX-style >environment under Windows, including gawk, but is probably more than
you want.

Definitely more than I can ask her to take on in order to test out a
simple gawk script, I think! Although by the looks of it, attempting to
get gawk running under Windows at all is going to be more complicated
than I can really expect her to handle :-(
--
Igenlode Visit the Ivory Tower http://ivory.ueuo.com/Tower/

* Never assume malice when ignorance is a possibility *

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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

Igenlode Wordsmith <Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header@[127.1]> wrote:

Definitely more than I can ask her to take on in order to test out a
simple gawk script, I think! Although by the looks of it, attempting to
get gawk running under Windows at all is going to be more complicated
than I can really expect her to handle :-(

If you don't need gawk specifically, one of the simpler options which
doesn't seem to need extra libraries installed is this BusyBox port:

https://frippery.org/busybox/

You could e.g. rename busybox.exe to awk.exe to avoid having to run it
with "busybox awk".

-Rus.
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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

On 25 Jul 2022 Stuart Ferguson wrote:

On Monday, 25 July 2022 at 07:07:04 UTC+1, Igenlode Wordsmith wrote:

How does one set about running gawk under Windows nowadays?

To use gawk on Windows with the minimum of fuss, try installing
gawk using the Scoop package manager (https://scoop.sh/).

Once you have scoop installed, which is a 5-minute job and requires
no administrator rights, "scoop install gawk" will have you up and
running straight away.

Thanks for the suggestion, which I have forwarded to my friend as a
solution that only involves installing *one* piece of software...
(although again, looking at the 'json' file for gawk, I think she might
need to do an 'install 7zip' first in order to be able to decompress the files!)

After reading https://www.makeuseof.com/windows-install-scoop/ I would
have thought most Windows users would actually find a graphical
installer less intimidating than one that involves enabling a PowerShell interface that gives you far-reaching access to the innards of your
computer, and then typing cryptic one-line instructions like
"iwr -useb get.scoop.sh | iex"

However, she seems quite sanguine at the prospect of doing all this
extra install work, which I had not expected :-)
--
Igenlode Visit the Ivory Tower http://ivory.ueuo.com/Tower/

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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

On 26 Jul 2022 Russell Marks wrote:

Igenlode Wordsmith <Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header@[127.1]> wrote:

Definitely more than I can ask her to take on in order to test out a
simple gawk script, I think! Although by the looks of it, attempting to
get gawk running under Windows at all is going to be more complicated
than I can really expect her to handle :-(

If you don't need gawk specifically, one of the simpler options which
doesn't seem to need extra libraries installed is this BusyBox port:

https://frippery.org/busybox/

Thanks - an interesting suggestion, especially as I wasn't aware of
having any gawk-specific code.
However, a quick test using "gawk -c" for compatibility mode immediately
throws up 'strftime' as being a gawk extension, and as the whole script
is based heavily around checking formatted dates it looks as if I do
need gawk in particular. Which is worth knowing anyhow...
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* Never assume malice when ignorance is a possibility *

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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

On 26.07.2022 11:05, Igenlode Wordsmith wrote:

Thanks - an interesting suggestion, especially as I wasn't aware of
having any gawk-specific code.
However, a quick test using "gawk -c" for compatibility mode immediately throws up 'strftime' as being a gawk extension, and as the whole script
is based heavily around checking formatted dates it looks as if I do
need gawk in particular. Which is worth knowing anyhow...

Yes, strftime is a GNU Awk extension (which may be available in other
awk versions or not). You still have to be careful since there's no
guaranteed set of supported time format specifiers; it depends on the
platform, which version of POSIX, and the underlying libraries. And
the documentation of the underlying strftime library function may not
even reflect what works with the awk on the same platform (been there).
There's a huge set of commonly supported format specifiers, but be
careful with some of the exotic ones; tests before going in production
with your programs help.

Janis

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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

El 25/07/2022 a las 0:47, Igenlode Wordsmith escribió:

How does one set about running gawk under Windows nowadays? All the references at http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/install.html look
worryingly ancient, and I know next to nothing about Windows software installation myself, while she is a self-admitted 'tech novice'.

I have my own 32bit Windows port of gawk-5.1.0. Ready to be used by
anybody else. Available at

http://mcollado.z15.es/xgawk/win32/

Just download gawk-5.1.0-win32-bin.zip, unpack it on c:\gnu, and put c:\gnu\bin in the path. That's all.

The distribution archive contains all the required DLL libraries as well
as full documentation in HTML and PDF formats.

HTH.
--
Manuel Collado - http://mcollado.z15.es
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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

On 27 Jul 2022 Manuel Collado wrote:

El 25/07/2022 a las 0:47, Igenlode Wordsmith escribió:

How does one set about running gawk under Windows nowadays? All the
references at http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/install.html look
worryingly ancient, and I know next to nothing about Windows software
installation myself, while she is a self-admitted 'tech novice'.

I have my own 32bit Windows port of gawk-5.1.0. Ready to be used by
anybody else. Available at

http://mcollado.z15.es/xgawk/win32/

Just download gawk-5.1.0-win32-bin.zip, unpack it on c:\gnu, and put >c:\gnu\bin in the path. That's all.

The distribution archive contains all the required DLL libraries as well
as full documentation in HTML and PDF formats.

Thanks -- that sounds like exactly what I was originally hoping to
find. I've forwarded her the link, and we'll have another go at gawk
over the weekend, with Busybox as a fallback alternative.

(Inevitably, I've managed to find another bug in the script
meanwhile...)
--
Igenlode Visit the Ivory Tower http://ivory.ueuo.com/Tower/

- I don't want to 'fit in' any more... - That makes two of us!

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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

Oops, sorry -- I meant to send this to the newsgroup, not directly to
Manuel (not least because my email is currently broken...)

On 27 Jul 2022 Manuel Collado wrote:

I have my own 32bit Windows port of gawk-5.1.0. Ready to be used by
anybody else. Available at

http://mcollado.z15.es/xgawk/win32/

Just download gawk-5.1.0-win32-bin.zip, unpack it on c:\gnu, and put >c:\gnu\bin in the path. That's all.

The distribution archive contains all the required DLL libraries as well
as full documentation in HTML and PDF formats.

She tried this, and got the error "The code execution cannot proceed
because libgmp-10.dll was not found" -- and indeed I can't find any such
file within the archive, so presumably it's a dependency that was unintentionally compiled into the distribution? :-(
--
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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

On 31/07/2022 16:42, Igenlode Wordsmith wrote:

Oops, sorry -- I meant to send this to the newsgroup, not directly to
Manuel (not least because my email is currently broken...)

On 27 Jul 2022 Manuel Collado wrote:

I have my own 32bit Windows port of gawk-5.1.0. Ready to be used by
anybody else. Available at

http://mcollado.z15.es/xgawk/win32/

Just download gawk-5.1.0-win32-bin.zip, unpack it on c:\gnu, and put
c:\gnu\bin in the path. That's all.

The distribution archive contains all the required DLL libraries as well
as full documentation in HTML and PDF formats.

She tried this, and got the error "The code execution cannot proceed
because libgmp-10.dll was not found" -- and indeed I can't find any such
file within the archive, so presumably it's a dependency that was unintentionally compiled into the distribution? :-(

I went to [1] and downloaded [2]. Unzipped [2], started a Windows
command shell, CD'd into the directory containing gawk.exe and ran the
command

.\gawk.exe --version

which worked first time. This was Windows 10.

[1] http://vkiefel.de/compiled-SW.html

[2] http://vkiefel.de/gawk-5.1.0-win32.zip
--
Bruce Horrocks
Surrey, England
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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

On 31 Jul 2022 Bruce Horrocks wrote:

I went to [1] and downloaded [2]. Unzipped [2], started a Windows
command shell, CD'd into the directory containing gawk.exe and ran the >command

.\gawk.exe --version

which worked first time. This was Windows 10.

[1] http://vkiefel.de/compiled-SW.html

[2] http://vkiefel.de/gawk-5.1.0-win32.zip

Thanks for the suggestion, which I have (again!) forwarded onwards.

I'm a bit surprised by the small size of the 'gawk.exe' file here, since
the one in the other archive was 6 Mb -- would that be because it
*doesn't* have the Cygwin stuff compiled in with it, or is it an
indication that it expects to link to external libraries?
--
Igenlode Visit the Ivory Tower http://ivory.ueuo.com/Tower/

* Ain't never gonna stop the rain by complainin'... *

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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

On 01/08/2022 10:11, Igenlode Wordsmith wrote:

On 31 Jul 2022 Bruce Horrocks wrote:

I went to [1] and downloaded [2]. Unzipped [2], started a Windows
command shell, CD'd into the directory containing gawk.exe and ran the
command

.\gawk.exe --version

which worked first time. This was Windows 10.

[1] http://vkiefel.de/compiled-SW.html

[2] http://vkiefel.de/gawk-5.1.0-win32.zip

Thanks for the suggestion, which I have (again!) forwarded onwards.

I'm a bit surprised by the small size of the 'gawk.exe' file here, since
the one in the other archive was 6 Mb -- would that be because it
*doesn't* have the Cygwin stuff compiled in with it, or is it an
indication that it expects to link to external libraries?

Despite its small size it is self-contained so nothing further to install.

I've no idea why the Cygwin one is so big, tbh.
--
Bruce Horrocks
Surrey, England
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