Tag: NetBSD

Compare error prompts of different awk flavours

Awk requires the opening brace of an action must be on the same line as the pattern it accompanies. I compared error prompts of different awk flavours, and my OS is NetBSD.

(1) awk shipped in NetBSD:

# awk 'BEGIN
> {print "Hello Awk!"}'
awk: syntax error at source line 2
 context is
        BEGIN >>>
 <<<
awk: bailing out at source line 2

(2) nawk:

# nawk 'BEGIN
{print "Hello Awk!"}'
nawk: syntax error at source line 2
 context is
        BEGIN >>>
 <<<
nawk: bailing out at source line 2

(3) mawk:

# mawk 'BEGIN
{print "Hello Awk!"}'
mawk: line 1: syntax error at or near end of line

(4) gawk:

# gawk 'BEGIN
{print "Hello Awk!"}'
gawk: cmd. line:2: BEGIN blocks must have an action part

IMHO, gawk gives more clear clues for this error.

Be aware of using gmake or make on BSD systems

When working on BSD systems, you should be aware of using gmake or make. E.g., I met a weird error using make on NetBSD today:

# make
.....
/usr/lib/crt0.o: In function `___start':
(.text+0xf7): undefined reference to `main'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
*** Error code 1
......

But using gmake, the compilation is OK.