Re: [bug-gawk] SYMTAB contains future variables

[Aharon Robbins]

Hi.

> Thanks, Arnold! 

Sure.

> > SYMTAB makes gawk's symbol table visible to the awk programmer.  It
> > is built as gawk parses the program and is complete before the
> > program starts to run.  
>
> Clear. I think those are exactly the sentences that are missing from
> the documentation. It currently reads: 
>
>     SYMTAB #
>
>     An array whose indices are the names of all currently defined
>     global variables and arrays in the program. (...)
>
> I interpreted "currently defined" as being related to the runtime.  

Good point. I removed the "currently" and added the paragraph that
you cited.

> > (Being able to add additional elements to SYMTAB may be a minor
> > mis-feature, but I don't really like the idea of making SYMTAB
> > completely read-only.)
>
> No! The variable indirection that writeable SYMTAB provides has
> already saved some programming efforts to be in need of a rewrite in
> another language. 

By writable I meant "being able to add arbitrary new elements" - this
is different that writing through SYMTAB to do indirect access.  But I'm
working now to stabilize the next release, so I'm going to leave it
alone.

Thanks,

Arnold