> It seems I would have to got to /etc/alternatives and rip it up and
> point it over by hand.

That confused me too when I first tried debian.  But then I learned
that the 'debian way' is to use update-alternatives to manage the
alternatives links.

  update-alternatives --display awk

  update-alternatives --display awk
  awk - status is auto.
   link currently points to /usr/bin/mawk
  /usr/bin/mawk - priority 20
   slave nawk: /usr/bin/mawk
   slave awk.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/mawk.1.gz
   slave nawk.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/mawk.1.gz
  /usr/bin/gawk - priority 10
   slave nawk: /usr/bin/gawk
   slave awk.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/gawk.1.gz
   slave nawk.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/gawk.1.gz
  Current `best' version is /usr/bin/mawk.

And you can use 'update-alternatives --config genericname' to manually
switch from one to another of an alternative generic thing like
'editor' and such.

And knowing how this works now if you were to remove mawk then the
alternatives would automatically be switched to gawk.  Therefore
instead of running 'update-alternatives --config awk' I would remove
it instead.

  apt-get remove mawk

However, I agree that gawk should be higher rated than mawk and that
the priorities are wrong for those packages.  The gawk priority should
be rated higher so that it is the preferred alternative if installed.
A bug report specific to the priority of gawk should be filed.

Bob

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