🚀 go-pugleaf

    In article <1993Jan22.210456.25409@psych.toronto.edu>,
gswan@psych.toronto.edu (George Swan) writes:

+ From: gswan@psych.toronto.edu (George Swan)
+ Subject: awk compilers for MS-DOS (was Re: About AWKCC)
+ Message-ID: <1993Jan22.210456.25409@psych.toronto.edu>
+ Summary: Such things exist
+ Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
+ Date: Fri, 22 Jan 93 13:04:56 PDT

	[11 lines omitted]
+ Thompson Automation, of uh, I forget, has been selling
+ an awk compiler for MS-DOS for at least a year now.
+ I have basically been happy with it.  One strange feature
+ is that all of the binaries it has created for me have all
+ been the same size.

    Hmm, this sounds kinda familiar... an obscure feature of  awk , frequently
disabled during compilation (making it unavailable), was the ability to write
a core image of  awk  after it had parsed the supplied script (program).  If
this feature is enabled, the command

		awk -S -f script.awk

would produce a file named  awk.out  -- a core image.  This image could be
subsequently "resumed" with the command

		awk -Rawk.out  [filename]

under the right conditions -- one being the requirement that the text segment
be writeable -- with (potential!) saving of time which would otherwise be
needed to parse the script file.

    It's a long shot, but my guess is that the T.A. compiler does something
similar: it creates a post-parsing core image of some  awk  (either embedded,
or on your system (does the compiler require you to have  awk  installed?)),
and wraps the image in a skeleton to produce an executable file.

[ Just for grins, try disassembling a program which the compiler produces to
  see if there's an obvious connection.  e.g.: embedded  awk  usage message.
]


    If you're curious, there's a short paper called

                    A Supplemental Document For AWK
                                 -or-
             Things Al, Pete, And Brian Didn't Mention Much

written some time ago by John W. Pierce, which describes several features,
known bugs, etc.; it also contains practical suggestions, plus interesting
or obscure (albeit dated) tidbits about  awk .  I'm not exactly certain of
the archive location from which I FTP'd the paper, but I think it's archived
on  cs.toronto.edu:  with the filename "awk.supp", somewhere under  doc/ 
directory.
Don't hold me to that, though; check with  archie  first if possible.


#include <std/disclaimer.h>
   /*  Employed by SGI in a non-speaking capacity.  All opinions are mine. */

-- 
					- Christopher J. Hawley / esper