Re: [bug-gawk] Gawk feature request - file list

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2017 09:50:02 -0700
> From: "Nelson H. F. Beebe" <address@hidden>
> 
> The solution in the Unix world is the pair of utilities, find and
> xargs.  The first is used to select files by metadata attributes or by
> filename patterns, and produce a list of those names on stdout. The
> xargs tool then reads that list, and runs a command supplied on xargs'
> own command line, supplying just enough files to avoid hitting the
> nasty ARG_MAX limit.
> 
> Thus, in a Cygwin bash terminal on Microsoft Windows, I would run
> something like this:
> 
>         find /cygdrive/c/data -name '*.dat' | xargs gawk -f myprog.awk
> 
> Windows 10 itself does not have xargs, but Cygwin is free, and once
> installed, provides about 95% of the power of Unix on top of the GUI
> rich, but tool poor, Windows operating system.

Cygwin is for users of Cygwin Gawk, where this problem is the same as
on any Posix platform.  Users of native Windows Gawk can find native
Windows ports of find and xargs here:

  http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/

But IMO this is not a convenient solution, its long Unix tradition
notwithstanding.