Copyright (C) 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification, are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright notice and this notice are preserved. Changes from 5.3.x to 5.4.0 --------------------------- 1. This release now uses Mike Haertel's MinRX regular expression matcher as the default regexp engine. The old regex and dfa engines are still available. More detail is available in the manual, and in the file README_d/README.matchers. At the very least, read that file! 2. The manual, in the Bugs section, now makes it explicit that (a) Ad hominem attacks on the lists will not be tolerated, and (b) Discussion of proprietary software is strongly discouraged. Repeated offenses are grounds for being banned from the lists. 3. There is now a new directive, @nsinclude, which works like @include but does not reset the namespace for the included file to "awk". See the manual for details. 4. When using lshift() or rshift() and attempting to shift by as many or more bits than in a uintmax_t, gawk returns zero, instead of whatever the C compiler and hardware might have done. 5. Gawk's use of persistent memory has changed somewhat: A. Gawk now stores additional meta-information in the backing file. This means that if you have a backing file with important data in it, you should dump the data to a text file using the old version, create a new backing file, and then read your data back in with the new version, to a *brand new* backing file. B. Gawk generates a warning if the version of gawk saved in the backing file doesn't match that of the current running gawk. C. It's now possible to use persistent memory and dynamic extensions without problems. Gawk notices if an extension is being loaded from a different path than what was first used and produces a fatal error in this case. 6. The ordchr extension now supports multibyte / wide characters. 7. Per the 2024 POSIX standard, `length(array)' is no longer an extension, but a regular feature. Thus --posix no longer rejects it and --lint no longer warns about it. 8. The --traditional option has been rationalized to bring gawk into sync with BWK awk. It no longer affects the return code from system(), and it no longer prevents using a regexp for RS. Internally, the code was cleaned up some as well. 9. Assertions in the C code are now enabled. To disable them, manually edit the various Makefiles after running configure and before running make. You will need to add -DNDEBUG to the CFLAGS variable. 10. PMA should now work on OpenBSD 7, FreeBSD 12 - 16, NetBSD 10 and 11, and MidnightBSD 3 and 4. 11. Hexadecimal floating-point values may now be used in program source code, with strtonum(), and with the -n/--non-decimal-data option. See the manual for details. 12. A large number of small "replacement" files for standard functions have been removed. These functions are now so standard that we simply expect them to always be available. This simplifies the distribution and the code maintenance. 13. Support for UDP in gawk's networking support is now obsolete. It never worked very well. It will be removed in version 6.0. Gawk issues a warning when attempting to use it. 14. Reading regular disk input files should be somewhat faster now, since gawk no longer checks for timeouts on such files. On one very large file, gawk '{ print }' saw approximately a 9% speedup. 15. The MinGW port of gawk for MS-Windows now supports UTF-8 encoded non-ASCII text when the console window where gawk runs uses the Windows codepage 65001 for output, even if the system-wide locale specifies another codepage. Similarly, the Cygwin port now also fully supports UTF-8. 16. There is a new option to configure: --enable-O3. This causes gcc to use -O3 instead of -O2 when compiling gawk. This is not the default because experience in some projects has shown (sadly) that -O3 can cause bugs. 17. There is a new translation: Arabic. The .gmo files for the ca, da, fi, ja, ka, ms, and vi translations are no longer built or included in the distribution, as those translations have gone too long without being updated. The .po files remain in the distribution, should any volunteers wish to come forward to update them. 18. OpenVMS support has been updated. This release builds on Alpha, Itanium and x86_64. 19. As usual, a number of small bugs have been fixed; see the ChangeLog for the details. Changes from 5.3.2 to 5.3.x --------------------------- 1. The Hebrew translation has been revived. 2. All non-standard variables are now not installed for --traditional and --posix. 3. It's been discovered that persistent memory and dynamic extensions don't mix. For now, trying this combination produces a fatal error. It may one day get fixed. Or, it may not. 4. A bug in the API has been fixed whereby using a numeric index to set an array element will work. As a result, the API minor version was increased to 1. Changes from 5.3.1 to 5.3.2 --------------------------- 1. The pretty printer now produces fewer spurious newlines; at the outermost level it now adds newlines between block comments and the block or function that follows them. The extra final newline is no longer produced. 2. OpenVMS 9.2-2 x86_64 is now supported. 3. On Linux and macos systems, the -no-pie linker flag is no longer required. PMA now works on macos systems with Apple silicon, and not just Intel systems. 4. Still more subtle issues related to uninitialized array elements have been fixed. 5. Associative arrays should now not grow quite as fast as they used to. 6. The code and documentation are now consistent with each other with respect to path searching and adding .awk to the filename. Both are always done, even with --posix and --traditional. 7. As usual, there have been several minor code cleanups and bug fixes. See the ChangeLog for details. Changes from 5.3.0 to 5.3.1 --------------------------- 1. More subtle issues related to uninitialized array elements have been fixed. 2. A number of bugs in the debugger related to handling of arrays have been fixed. 3. Some subtle bugs in the API have been fixed. 4. Use of MPFR is now possible again on 32-bit Power PC Mac systems. 5. Race conditions around broken pipes for system() and read and write pipes should now be closed off. 6. Support for OSF/1 has been removed. 7. The never-documented --nostalgia option has been removed. It was causing bug reports. 8. The implementation of printf/sprintf has been thoroughly reworked in order to make the code more maintainable and to fix a goodly number of corner cases. 9. As usual, there have been several minor code cleanups and bug fixes. See the ChangeLog for details. Changes from 5.2.x to 5.3.0 --------------------------- 1. Infrastructure changes: Removed the use of libsigsegv. The value-add was never very much and it caused problems in some environments. 2. In keeping with new features in BWK awk, gawk now has built-in CSV file parsing. The behavior is intended to be identical to that of the "One True AWK" when --csv is applied. See the manual for details. 3. Also in keeping with BWK awk, gawk now supports a new \u escape sequence. This should be followed by 1-8 hexadecimal digits. The given code point is converted to its corresponding multibyte encoding for storage inside gawk. See the manual. 4. If PROCINFO["BUFFERPIPE"] exists, then pipe output is buffered. You can also use PROCINFO["command", "BUFFERPIPE"]. See the manual for details. 5. Because of the additional `do_csv' variable in the API, which breaks binary compatibility, the API major version was updated to 4 and the minor version was reset to zero. The API remains source code compatible; that is, existing extensions should only require recompilation. 6. The manual now requires Texinfo 7.1 and its texinfo.tex for formatting. As a result, we no longer need to pre-process it, removing the need for gawktexi.in and leaving just gawk.texi. 7. And of course, there have been several minor code cleanups and bug fixes. See the ChangeLog for details. Changes from 5.2.2 to 5.2.x --------------------------- 1. The readdir extension has been updated with additonal code and features, see the manual or its man page. As a result, the readdir_test.c extension has been removed. 2. We have a new translation: Ukrainian. 3. Several subtle issues related to null regexp matches around multibyte characters have been fixed. Changes from 5.2.1 to 5.2.2 --------------------------- 1. Infrastructure upgrades: makeinfo 7.0.1 must be used to format the manual. As a result, the manual can also now be formatted with LaTeX by running it through `makeinfo --latex'. 2. Gawk no longer builds an x86_64 executable on M1 macOS systems. This means that PMA is unavailable on those systems. 3. Gawk will now diagnose if a heap file was created with a different setting of -M/--bignum than in the current invocation and exit with a fatal message if so. 4. Gawk no longer "leaks" its free list of NODEs in the heap file, resulting in much more efficient usage of persistent storage. 5. PROCINFO["pma"] exists if the PMA allocator is compiled into gawk. Its value is the PMA version. 6. The time extension is no longer deprecated. The strptime() function from gawkextlib's timex extension has been added to it. 7. Better information is passed to input parsers for when they want to decide whether or not to take control of a file. In particular, the readdir extension is simplified for Windows because of this. 8. The various PNG files are now installed for Info and HTML. The images files now have gawk_ prefixed names to avoid any conflicts with other installed PNG file names. 9. As usual, there have been several minor code cleanups and bug fixes. See the ChangeLog for details. Changes from 5.2.0 to 5.2.1 --------------------------- 1. Infrastructure upgrades: PMA version Avon 8. 2. Issues related to the sign of NaN and Inf values on RiscV have been fixed; gawk now gives identical results on that platform as it does on others. 3. A few issues with the debugger have been fixed. 4. More subtle issues with untyped array elements being passed to functions have been fixed. 5. The rwarray extension's readall() function has had some bugs fixed. 6. The PMA allocator is now supported on FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Linux on S/390x. It is now supported also on both Intel and M1 macOS systems. 7. There have been several minor code cleanups and bug fixes. See the ChangeLog for details. Changes from 5.1.x to 5.2.0 --------------------------- ***************************************************************************** * MPFR mode (the -M option) is now ON PAROLE. This feature is now being * * supported by a volunteer in the development team and not by the primary * * maintainer. If this situation changes, then the feature will be removed. * * For more information see this section in the manual: * * https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/MPFR-On-Parole.html * ***************************************************************************** 1. Infrastructure upgrades: Libtool 2.4.7, Bison 3.8.2. 2. Numeric scalars now compare in the same way as C for the relational operators. Comparison order for sorting has not changed. This only makes a difference when comparing Infinity and NaN values with regular numbers; it should not be noticeable most of the time. 3. If the AWK_HASH environment variable is set to "fnv1a" gawk will use the FNV1-A hash function for associative arrays. 4. The CMake infrastructure has been removed. In the five years it was in the tree, nobody used it, and it was not updated. 5. There is now a new function, mkbool(), that creates Boolean-typed values. These values *are* numbers, but they are also tagged as Boolean. This is mainly for use with data exchange to/from languages or environments that support real Boolean values. See the manual for details. 6. As BWK awk has supported interval expressions since 2019, they are now enabled even if --traditional is supplied. The -r/--re-interval option remains, but it does nothing. 7. The rwarray extension has two new functions, writeall() and readall(), for saving / restoring all of gawk's variables and arrays. 8. The new `gawkbug' script should be used for reporting bugs. 9. The manual page (doc/gawk.1) has been considerably reduced in size. Wherever possible, details were replaced with references to the online copy of the manual. 10. Gawk now supports Terence Kelly's "persistent malloc" (pma), allowing gawk to preserve its variables, arrays and user-defined functions between runs. THIS IS AN EXPERIMENTAL FEATURE! For more information, see the manual. A new pm-gawk.1 man page is included, as is a separate user manual that focuses on the feature. 11. Support for OS/2 has been removed. It was not being actively maintained. 12. Similarly, support for DJGPP has been removed. It also was not being actively maintained. 13. VAX/VMS is no longer supported, as it can no longer be tested. The files for it remain in the distribution but will be removed eventually. 14. Some subtle issues with untyped array elements being passed to functions have been fixed. 15. Syntax errors are now immediately fatal. This prevents problems with errors from fuzzers and other such things. 16. There have been numerous minor code cleanups and bug fixes. See the ChangeLog for details. Changes from 5.1.1 to 5.1.x --------------------------- 1. Infrastructure upgrades: Automake 1.16.5, Texinfo 6.8. 2. The rwarray extension now supports writing and reading GMP and MPFR values. As a result, a bug in the API code was fixed. Changes from 5.1.0 to 5.1.1 --------------------------- 1. Infrastructure upgrades: Bison 3.8, Gettext 0.20.2, Automake 1.16.4, and (will wonders never cease) Autoconf 2.71. 2. asort and asorti now allow FUNCTAB and SYMTAB as the first argument if a second destination array is supplied. Similarly, using either array as the second argument is now a fatal error. Additionally, using either array as the destination for split(), match(), etc. also causes a fatal error. 3. The new -I/--trace option prints a trace of the byte codes as they are executed. 4. A number of subtle bugs relating to MPFR mode that caused differences between regular operation and MPFR mode have been fixed. 5. The API now handles MPFR/GMP values slightly differently, requiring different memory management for those values. See the manual for the details if you have an extension using those values. As a result, the minor version was incremented. 6. $0 and the fields are now cleared before starting a BEGINFILE rule. 7. The duplication of m4 and build-aux directories between the main directory and the extension directory has been removed. This simplifies the distribution. 8. The test suite has been improved, making it easier to run the entire suite with -M. Use `GAWK_TEST_ARGS=-M make check' to do so. 9. Profiling and pretty-printing output has been modified slightly so that functions are presented in a reasonable order with respect to the namespaces that contain them. 10. Several example programs in the manual have been updated to their modern POSIX equivalents. 11. A number of examples in doc/gawkinet.texi have been updated for current times. Thanks to Juergen Kahrs for the work. 12. Handling of Infinity and NaN values has been improved. 13. There has been a general tightening up of the use of const and of types. 14. The "no effect" lint warnings have been fixed up and now behave more sanely. 15. The manual has been updated with much more information about what is and is not a bug, and the changes in the gawk mailing lists. 16. The behavior of strongly-typed regexp constants when passed as the third argument to sub() or gsub() has been clarified in the code and in the manual. 17. Similar to item #4 above, division by zero is now fatal in MPFR mode, as it is in regular mode. 18. There have been numerous minor code cleanups and bug fixes. See the ChangeLog for details. Changes from 5.0.1 to 5.1.0 --------------------------- 1. The major version of the API is bumped to 3, something that should have happened at the 5.0.0 release but didn't. 2. A number of memory leak issues have been fixed. 3. Infrastructure upgrades: Bison 3.5.4, Texinfo 6.7, Gettext 0.20.1, Automake 1.16.2. 4. The indexing in the manual has been thoroughly revised, in particular making use of the facilities in Texinfo 6.7. That version (or newer) must be used to format the manual. 5. MSYS2 is now supported out-of-the-box by configure. 6. Several bugs have been fixed. See the ChangeLog for details. Changes from 5.0.0 to 5.0.1 --------------------------- 1. A number of ChangeLog.1 files that were left out of the distribution have been restored. 2. Multiple syntax errors should no longer be able to cause a core dump. 3. Sandbox mode now disallows assigning new filename values in ARGV that were not there when gawk was invoked. 4. There are many small documentation improvements in the manual. 5. The new argument "no-ext" to --lint disables ``XXX is a gawk extension'' lint warnings. 6. Infrastructure upgrades: Bison 3.4. 7. A number of bugs, some of them quite significant, have been fixed. See the ChangeLog for details. Changes from 4.2.1 to 5.0.0 --------------------------- 1. Support for the POSIX standard %a and %A printf formats has been added. 2. The test infrastructure has been greatly improved, simplifying the contents of test/Makefile.am and making it possible to generate pc/Makefile.tst from test/Makefile.in. 3. The regex routines have been replaced with those from GNULIB, allowing me to stop carrying forward decades of changes against the original ones from GLIBC. 4. Infrastructure upgrades: Bison 3.3, Automake 1.16.1, Gettext 0.19.8.1, makeinfo 6.5. 5. The undocumented configure option and code that enabled the use of non-English "letters" in identifiers is now gone. 6. The `--with-whiny-user-strftime' configuration option is now gone. 7. The code now makes some stronger assumptions about a C99 environment. 8. PROCINFO["platform"] yields a string indicating the platform for which gawk was compiled. 9. Writing to elements of SYMTAB that are not variable names now causes a fatal error. THIS CHANGES BEHAVIOR. 10. Comment handling in the pretty-printer has been reworked almost completely from scratch. As a result, comments in many corner cases that were previously lost are now included in the formatted output. 11. Namespaces have been implemented! See the manual. One consequence of this is that files included with -i, read with -f, and command line program segments must all be self-contained syntactic units. E.g., you can no longer do something like this: gawk -e 'BEGIN {' -e 'print "hello" }' 12. Gawk now uses the locale settings for ignoring case in single byte locales, instead of hardwiring in Latin-1. 13. A number of bugs, some of them quite significant, have been fixed. See the ChangeLog for details.