Beta release of gawk 5.1.1

[Arnold Robbins]

This note is to announce the BETA release of GNU Awk 5.1.1.

It is available from:

        http://www.skeeve.com/gawk/gawk-5.1.1f.tar.gz

This is a bug fix release.

The important part of the NEWS file is below.

As far as I can tell, the documentation and code have both hit the
freeze point.

So, why do a beta release? So that you, yes you, the end user, can see
if anything I've done breaks gawk for you.  Then you can TELL ME ABOUT
IT so that I can fix it for the final release.

Thanks,

Arnold Robbins
arnold@skeeve.com
---------------------------------------------
   Copyright (C) 2019, 2020, 2021 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
   
   Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
   are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
   notice and this notice are preserved.

Changes from 5.1.0 to 5.1.1
---------------------------

1. Infrastructure upgrades: Bison 3.8, Gettext 0.20.2, Automake 1.16.4,
   and (will wonders never cease) Autoconf 2.71.

2. asort and asorti now allow FUNCTAB and SYMTAB as the first argument if a
   second destination array is supplied. Similarly, using either array as
   the second argument is now a fatal error. Additionally, using either
   array as the destination for split(), match(), etc. also causes a
   fatal error.

3. The new -I/--trace option prints a trace of the byte codes as they
   are executed.

4. A number of subtle bugs relating to MPFR mode that caused differences
   between regular operation and MPFR mode have been fixed.

5. The API now handles MPFR/GMP values slightly differently, requiring
   different memory management for those values. See the manual for the
   details if you have an extension using those values.  As a result,
   the minor version was incremented.

6. $0 and the fields are now cleared before starting a BEGINFILE rule.

7. The duplication of m4 and build-aux directories between the main
   directory and the extension directory has been removed. This
   simplifies the distribution.

8. The test suite has been improved, making it easier to run the entire
   suite with -M. Use `GAWK_TEST_ARGS=-M make check' to do so.

9. Profiling and pretty-printing output has been modified slightly so
   that functions are presented in a reasonable order with respect
   to the namespaces that contain them.

10. Several example programs in the manual have been updated to their
    modern POSIX equivalents.

11. Handling of Infinity and NaN values has been improved.

12. There has been a general tightening up of the use of const and
    of types.

13. The "no effect" lint warnings have been fixed up and now behave
    more sanely.

14. The manual has been updated with much more information about what is
    and is not a bug, and the changes in the gawk mailing lists.

15. Similar to item #4 above, division by zero is now fatal in MPFR
    mode, as it is in regular mode.

16. There have been numerous minor code cleanups and bug fixes. See the
    ChangeLog for details.