[bug-gawk] Possible gawk Bug--Handling of --source Option

[Neil R. Ormos]

I have a question about a behavior of gawk 4.1.1 which differs from that in 
3.1.7.  I'm not sure if it's a bug.

The possible bug relates how gawk handles program text provided on the command 
line in an argument to a --source= option.

Older gawk (e.g. 3.1.7) appears to allow the statements of a single action to 
be distributed among several --source= arguments that appear on the command 
line invoking gawk.

The gawk in Debian Stable (e.g. 4.1.1) appears to require that any action 
opened in a --source= argument be closed in the same argument, so that an 
action cannot span multple --source= arguments.

As far as I can tell, the the GNU Awk User's Guide does not directly specify 
either the new or the old behavior.  However, the manual's section directed to 
the igawk shell-wrapper script [*], that provides a mechanism for including 
files but otherwise appears to be intended to simulate invoking gawk the 
ordinary way, characterizes the wrapper script's handling of a --source 
argument as, "The source text is appended to program".  

[*] http://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.html#Igawk-Program

############################################################
### OLD ###

> lsb_release -d
Description:    Debian GNU/Linux 6.0.10 (squeeze)

> gawk --version
GNU Awk 3.1.7
[...]

> gawk --source='BEGIN{a=5};' --source='BEGIN{print a}'
5

> gawk --source='BEGIN{a=5; ' --source='print a}'
5

############################################################
### NEW ###

> lsb_release -d
Description:  Debian GNU/Linux 8.7 (jessie)

> gawk --version
GNU Awk 4.1.1, API: 1.1 (GNU MPFR 3.1.2-p3, GNU MP 6.0.0)
[...]

> gawk --source='BEGIN{a=5};' --source='BEGIN{print a}'
5

> gawk --source='BEGIN{a=5; ' --source='print a}'
gawk: cmd. line:1: BEGIN{a=5;
gawk: cmd. line:1:            ^ unexpected newline or end of string

############################################################

This seems like a bug to me, but I don't know if the completeness of a --source 
argument is specified more definitively somewhere other than in the User's 
Guide.

Thanks for your help.

Best regards,

--Neil Ormos