Re: [bug-gawk] Weird printf '%c' behaviour under non-C locale

[Jeroen Schot]

Hello,

On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 11:23:53AM +0300, Aharon Robbins wrote:
> > A Debian user reported a bug [1] about gawk's printf '%c' behaviour,
> > which has changed in 4.0. It is no longer possible to write single
> > bytes when using a multibyte locale.
> >
> > From what I understand the new behaviour is in line POSIX, but I
> > believe there should still be a way to write single bytes (other than
> > changing the locale of the entire program).
> >
> > I am interested in your opinion on this.
> 
> Thanks for the report. I reviewed the test case you pointed to. I would
> not call it a bug, per se, but it is a corner case. ("Damned if you do
> and damned if you don't.")
> 
> As we discussed offline, I think the -b option is the correct answer
> here. I have updated the doc to reflect that -b also affects output.
> I tested that if the poster changes his script to
> 
>       #! /usr/bin/gawk -bf
>       ....
> 
> that the correct result is produced, even in a UTF-8 locale.
> 
> Another option, portable across awks and other Unix systems, would be
> to rework the script as a shell script:
> 
>       #! /bin/sh
>       LC_ALL=C
>       export LC_ALL   # override all inherited locale settings
>       awk '....' "$@"
> 
> Hmmm. Might need a little more shell scripting to get the -v options before
> the program, but you get the idea.

Thanks for your explanation. I agree with you and have notified the
original bug reporter of the available options.

Kind regards,

Jeroen Schot