As for gawk and mawk, what is written in the mawk package description is: Mawk is smaller and much faster than gawk. It has some compile-time limits such as NF = 32767 and sprintf buffer = 1020.
Now whatever one's oppinion of that is, perhaps this is why mawk is installed by default. But one certainly can install gawk easily enough. Frankly, I don't really understand what the big deal is with which package of the examples that were cited is installed by default. Installing a different package is usually a simple matter of apt-get use, so if you don't like something that is there, replacing it usually isn't any big undertaking. Cheryl -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]