goawk's printf family of functions under Windows

[jftuga]

Please let single-quotes be used in the printf family of functions. Example:

C:\bin>dir c:\windows\system32 /s/a-d/-c | mawk "{sum+=$4} END {printf('Total size: %.0f bytes,  %3.2f (GB) for %1d files.\n', sum, (sum/1073741824.0), NR)}"
Total size: 4559643636 bytes,  4.25 (GB) for 24857 files.

Under goawk:

C:\bin>dir c:\windows\system32 /s/a-d/-c | goawk "{sum+=$4} END {printf('Total size: %.0f bytes,  %3.2f (GB) for %1d files.\n', sum, (sum/1073741824.0), NR)}"
------------------------------------
{sum+=$4} END {printf('Total size: %.0f bytes,  %3.2f (GB) for %1d files.\n', sum, (sum/1073741824.0), NR)}
                      ^
------------------------------------
parse error at 1:23: unexpected '\''

Under Windows, the double-quote has to be used to combine space-containing arguments into one single, command-line argument. Single quotes can not be used. Therefore, single-quotes must be allowed in the goawk implementation of the printf family of functions. Can you please make it so that the printf family can use either single or double quotes?

[benhoyt]

Hmm, that's strange. Does the AWK (or mawk) grammar actually change on Windows to support single quoted strings? When I try to use single-quoted strings in mawk on Unix (OS X), I get:

$ mawk "BEGIN { printf('foo') }"
mawk: 1: unexpected character '''

So it surprises me that this would work on Windows. Does your first example work for awk and gawk too? From what I've seen by Googling, folks use double quotes but escape them according to Windows shell rules.

[jftuga]

It does not work with gawk 4.2.1.

c:\>dir c:\windows\system32 /s/a-d/-c | .\gawk.exe "{sum+=$4} END {printf('Total size: %.0f bytes,  %3.2f (GB) for %1d files.\n', sum, (sum/1073741824.0), NR)}"
gawk: cmd. line:1: {sum+=$4} END {printf('Total size: %.0f bytes,  %3.2f (GB) for %1d files.\n', sum, (sum/1073741824.0), NR)}
gawk: cmd. line:1:                       ^ invalid char ''' in expression
gawk: cmd. line:1: {sum+=$4} END {printf('Total size: %.0f bytes,  %3.2f (GB) for %1d files.\n', sum, (sum/1073741824.0), NR)}
gawk: cmd. line:1:                       ^ syntax error

The ^ symbol is the escape character for Windows cmd-prompt, but escaping the double-quote still results in a syntax error...

gawk: cmd. line:1: {sum+=$4} END {printf(^Total
gawk: cmd. line:1:                       ^ syntax error

Even though single-quotes are not 'official', they still would be really nice to have under Windows.

[jftuga]

A source for a working version of mawk for Windows is located here:

http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/mawk.htm

Binaries |   Zip |   96988 |   29 September 2005 |   0c499dacf47c513a8d9af4ec2abe94a7

[benhoyt]

I don't think I'm going to make this change, sorry. It's not per spec and I'd rather folks work around it on Windows using standard Windows escapes than change the syntax.

[jftuga]

I made a patch for this:

https://gist.github.com/jftuga/840cc95139cd009621313ca30037e532

I copied the case statement for the double quotes in lexer.go and then changed the two instances of:

from '"' to '\'':

[benhoyt]

Hey @jftuga. I actually looked at the lexer and changed my mind on this. It's trivial (a two-line change) and doesn't break any syntax or really hurt anything. So I added the fix and lexer and interp tests for it in 4ac40bb. Hope that helps!

[jftuga]

Thank you for making this change. I really appreciate it.