gawk is distributed as a tar file compressed with the
GNU Zip program, gzip.
Once you have the distribution (for example,
`gawk-3.0.3.tar.gz'), first use gzip to expand the
file, and then use tar to extract it. You can use the following
pipeline to produce the gawk distribution:
# Under System V, add 'o' to the tar flags gzip -d -c gawk-3.0.3.tar.gz | tar -xvpf -
This will create a directory named `gawk-3.0.3' in the current directory.
The distribution file name is of the form
`gawk-V.R.n.tar.gz'.
The V represents the major version of gawk,
the R represents the current release of version V, and
the n represents a patch level, meaning that minor bugs have
been fixed in the release. The current patch level is 3,
but when
retrieving distributions, you should get the version with the highest
version, release, and patch level. (Note that release levels greater than
or equal to 90 denote "beta," or non-production software; you may not wish
to retrieve such a version unless you don't mind experimenting.)
If you are not on a Unix system, you will need to make other arrangements
for getting and extracting the gawk distribution. You should consult
a local expert.
Go to the first, previous, next, last section, table of contents.