Re: [bug-gawk] The GNU Awk User's Guide:1.1.6> Shell-Quoting Issues

[Aharon Robbins]

Greetings. Thank you for taking the time to report a concern.

> Date: Sat, 05 Jan 2013 22:42:31 +0800
> From: ???? <address@hidden>
> To: address@hidden, address@hidden
> Subject: [bug-gawk] The GNU Awk User's Guide:1.1.6>  Shell-Quoting Issues
>
> Hi,
>      I'm a novice to awk, and find the awk user's guide at gnu web, the 
> link is like below:
>      http://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.html
>
>      My system is ubuntu, details like below:
>      ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS
>
>      My gawk version is like below:
>      GNU Awk 3.1.8

Please note that the online version of the manual documents the latest
release, 4.0.2, which has features not in 3.1.8

>      A little issue I encountered is when I read the The GNU Awk User's 
> Guide:1.1.6>  Shell-Quoting Issues,  the guide says:
>
> /          $ awk "BEGIN { print \"Don't Panic!\" }"//
> //          -| Don't Panic!/
>
>      However, when I write the same thing into my termial,
>
> /        address@hidden:~/tmp$ gawk "BEGIN { print \"Don't Panic!\" }"//
> //        bash: !\": event not found/
>
>      and I work around this issue using the below command,
>
>          address@hidden:~/tmp$ gawk "BEGIN { print \"Don't Panic\!\" }"
>          gawk: warning: escape sequence `\!' treated as plain `!'
>          Don't Panic!
>
>      I think '!' is a sensitive sign to bash.

This is true.

>
>      Best wishes to you from  Jianchao.li(??????) Shenzhen city, 
> Guangdong province, China Mainland.

Your point is addressed in the documentation. If you look at:

http://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/Read-Terminal.html#Read-Terminal

You will see the following:

        If you use Bash as your shell, you should execute the command
        'set +H' before running this program interactively, to disable
        the C shell-style command history, which treats '!' as a special
        character. We recommend putting this command into your personal
        startup file.

Thanks,

Arnold