> I thought it was obvious that the output was from a 'standard' Plan 9 > terminal. But given the percentage of people actually using plan9 in > this list, I guess I should have been much more explicit. > > And the problem is precisely that the environment under which awk run > commands is completely different from the one awk is run in; in other > words, awk spreads its 'simian' (ape-ish) nature.
i think that awk is in a no-win situation here. if it used rc, then awk scripts from plan 9 would break on unix and vice versa. sam and acme have similar issues in p9p's environment. i don't see how either using the native shell or using the shell from the original environment is wrong a priori. awk picks a lane and sticks too it. i'd bet that benefits other ape stuff like lp. if you really don't like this situation, perhaps the solution is to improve upon awk. a plan 9 scripting language based on sre's --- as suggested by rob --- could be really cool. - erik
