Due to the way the awk language evolved, variables are either
global (usable by the entire program), or local (usable just by
a specific function). There is no intermediate state analogous to
static variables in C.
Library functions often need to have global variables that they can use to
preserve state information between calls to the function. For example,
getopt's variable _opti
(see section Processing Command Line Options),
and the _tm_months array used by mktime
(see section Turning Dates Into Timestamps).
Such variables are called private, since the only functions that need to
use them are the ones in the library.
When writing a library function, you should try to choose names for your private variables so that they will not conflict with any variables used by either another library function or a user's main program. For example, a name like `i' or `j' is not a good choice, since user programs often use variable names like these for their own purposes.
The example programs shown in this chapter all start the names of their private variables with an underscore (`_'). Users generally don't use leading underscores in their variable names, so this convention immediately decreases the chances that the variable name will be accidentally shared with the user's program.
In addition, several of the library functions use a prefix that helps
indicate what function or set of functions uses the variables. For example,
_tm_months in mktime
(see section Turning Dates Into Timestamps), and
_pw_byname in the user data base routines
(see section Reading the User Database).
This convention is recommended, since it even further decreases the chance
of inadvertent conflict among variable names.
Note that this convention can be used equally well both for variable names
and for private function names too.
While I could have re-written all the library routines to use this
convention, I did not do so, in order to show how my own awk
programming style has evolved, and to provide some basis for this
discussion.
As a final note on variable naming, if a function makes global variables
available for use by a main program, it is a good convention to start that
variable's name with a capital letter.
For example, getopt's Opterr and Optind variables
(see section Processing Command Line Options).
The leading capital letter indicates that it is global, while the fact that
the variable name is not all capital letters indicates that the variable is
not one of awk's built-in variables, like FS.
It is also important that all variables in library functions that do not need to save state are in fact declared local. If this is not done, the variable could accidentally be used in the user's program, leading to bugs that are very difficult to track down.
function lib_func(x, y, l1, l2)
{
...
use variable some_var # some_var could be local
... # but is not by oversight
}
A different convention, common in the Tcl community, is to use a single
associative array to hold the values needed by the library function(s), or
"package." This significantly decreases the number of actual global names
in use. For example, the functions described in
section Reading the User Database,
might have used PW_data["inited"], PW_data["total"],
PW_data["count"] and PW_data["awklib"], instead of
_pw_inited, _pw_awklib, _pw_total,
and _pw_count.
The conventions presented in this section are exactly that, conventions. You are not required to write your programs this way, we merely recommend that you do so.
Go to the first, previous, next, last section, table of contents.