Re: [bug-gawk] Gawk feature request - file list

[Daniele Zanoli]

hello,
super good trick!
but this would require to use it in all my scripts... and it looks like a little 
bit too "tricky"
maybe a "public" option would be cleaner to be handled

Unfortunately I'm often using a Windows port of Gawk (I have to run it on 
several PCs of my colleagues) and the windows shell command line is only 32k 
characters (or bytes?) long...

I have built a kind of "IDE" which launches awk scripts over files in order to 
make it simple to use also for non tech people but currently I am limited on the 
max number of files I can handle.

thanks anyway!

Daniele


Original Message  --------
Subject: Re: [bug-gawk] Gawk feature request - file list
From: address@hidden
To: address@hidden, address@hidden
Date: 1/2/2017, 15:57:18

> Hi.
>
> Thank you for your note.
>
> Daniele Zanoli <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> > I'm an enthusiast user of gawk. I hope this is the best address to place a
> > feature request (I could not find an "official" place for requests)
> >
> > Often I have to use gawk on a large number of files with a single execution of
> > gawk (I have to compare some file contents) but it is very easy to reach the
> > maximum length of the shell command line, since files are in different paths
> >
> > So I think it would be useful (not only for me) a new command line switch to
> > specify a file that contains the names of the files to process (e.g.
> > gawk .. -list myfilelist.txt ...)
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> > --
> > Daniele
>
> This doesn't require a new option; it can be done easily in awk code.
> Something like the following (untested, but you'll get the idea):
>
>         BEGIN {
>                 filelist = ARGV[1]
>                 ARGC--
>                 for (i = 1; (getline filename < filelist) > 0; i++) {
>                         ARGV[i] = filename
>                         ARGC++
>                 }
>         }
>
> should do the trick.
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> Arnold

--
Daniele