Re: too many arguments lint warning - should it be standard?

[arnold]

Thanks for the note.

Every awk implementation I have tried silently accepts the extra
argument.  I think it would break compatibility to turn this warning
on by default, however useful that might otherwise be.  Instead,
just run with --lint all the time (set an alias or script). If your
code is clean, you won't get any complaints. :-)

Thanks,

Arnold

Ed Morton <address@hidden> wrote:

> I just wrote this code with a bug in it where I used a `,` instead of a 
> `;` after the printf data argument:
>
>     awk -v x=5 '{printf "%s\n", x, x=7}'
>
> My intent was to print a `5` for the first input line and then `7` for 
> subsequent lines so what I MEANT to write was:
>
>     awk -v x=5 '{printf "%s\n", x; x=7}'
>
> Note the semi-colon in `x; x=` vs the comma `x, x=`. I didn't notice the 
> bug for a while because the code with the bug actually produces the 
> expected output:
>
>     $ seq 3 | awk -v x=5 '{printf "%s\n", x, x=7}'
>     5
>     7
>     7
>
> with no complaints. When I ran with lint enabled I did get a warning:
>
>     $ seq 3 | awk --lint -v x=5 '{printf "%s\n", x, x=7}'
>     awk: cmd. line:1: (FILENAME=- FNR=1) warning: too many arguments
>     supplied for format string
>     5
>     awk: cmd. line:1: (FILENAME=- FNR=2) warning: too many arguments
>     supplied for format string
>     7
>     awk: cmd. line:1: (FILENAME=- FNR=3) warning: too many arguments
>     supplied for format string
>     7
>
> So - should that warning appear by default rather than just when 
> `--lint` is added or is there some scenario where having more arguments 
> than the format string takes would be deliberate/useful?
>
> I'm running gawk 5.0.1 on cygwin.
>
> Regards,
>
>       Ed.
>