1 This file lists future projects and enhancements for gawk. Items are listed
2 in roughly the order they will be done for a given release. This file is
3 mainly for use by the developers to help keep themselves on track, please
4 don't bug us too much about schedules or what all this really means.
6 With the 3.0 release, we are acknowledging that awk is not PERL, nor should
7 it become PERL. (To paraphrase Dennis Ritchie, "If you want PERL, you
8 know where to get it.")
10 The focus on the future is thus narrowed to performance and functional
11 enhancements, with only minor plans for significant new features.
15 DONE: Move to autoconf-based configure system.
17 DONE: Allow RS to be a regexp.
19 DONE: RT variable to hold text of record terminator
21 DONE: split() with null string as third arg to split up strings
23 DONE: Analogously, setting FS="" would split the input record into
24 individual characters.
26 DONE: Generalize IGNORECASE
27 - any value makes it work, not just numeric non-zero
28 - make it apply to *all* string comparisons
30 DONE: Incorporate newer dfa.c and regex.c
32 DONE: Go to POSIX regexps
34 DONE: Make regex + dfa less dependant on gawk header file includes
36 DONE: Source code formatting cleaned up and regularized
38 DONE: Clean up code by isolating system-specific functions in
41 DONE: General sub function:
42 gensub(pat, sub, global_flag[, line])
43 that return the substituted strings and allow \1 etc.
46 DONE: Add AWKPATH to ENVIRON if it's not there
48 DONE: Undertake significant directory reorganization.
50 DONE: Extensive manual cleanup:
51 Use of texinfo 2.0 features
53 Document posix regexps
54 Document all of the above.
58 A PROCINFO array to replace /dev/pid, /dev/user, et al.
60 DONE: Use mmap to read input files on systems that support it.
62 Add `abort' statement a la Thompson awk.
64 Consider removing use of and/or need for the protos.h file.
66 Use a new or improved dfa.
68 Integrate GNU NLS support.
70 Bring out hooks for NLS support into gawk itself.
72 DBM storage of awk arrays. Try to allow multiple dbm packages.
76 DONE: Do a reference card.
78 ? Have strftime() pay attention to the value of ENVIRON["TZ"]
80 Additional manual features:
81 Document use of dbm arrays
84 ? Add an error messages section to the manual
85 ? A section on where gawk is bounded
92 Add a lint check if the return value of a function is used but
93 the function did not supply a value.
95 Do an optimization pass over parse tree?
97 Make awk '/foo/' files... run at egrep speeds
102 Create a gawk compiler?
104 Create a gawk-to-C translator? (or C++??)
106 Provide awk profiling and debugging.