strange path hardwired in awk

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3 total messages Started by Malcolm Beattie Thu, 28 Jan 1993 12:15

#7321

Author: Malcolm Beattie
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 12:15

15 lines
1208 bytes

While looking through a more than usually verbose audit log,
I noticed that awk attempts to open /crp/pjw/awkhist/awkhist.
`strings /bin/awk' shows that this path is hardwired into
the binary. Does anyone know why or what this is?

This is Ultrix 4.2a on a DEC5500. The same string is not
present under SunOS 4.1 which is the other awk I checked.

--Malcolm

-- 
Malcolm Beattie <mbeattie@black.ox.ac.uk> | I'm not a kernel hacker
Oxford University Computing Services      | I'm a kernel hacker's mate
13 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6NN (U.K.)   | And I'm only hacking kernels
Tel: +44 865 273232 Fax: +44 865 273275   | 'Cos the kernel hacker's late

Re: strange path hardwired in awk

#7324

Author: Roland Schemers
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 22:33

26 lines
1625 bytes

In article <1993Jan28.121515.3498@black.ox.ac.uk> mbeattie@black.ox.ac.uk (Malcolm Beattie) writes:
>While looking through a more than usually verbose audit log,
>I noticed that awk attempts to open /crp/pjw/awkhist/awkhist.
>`strings /bin/awk' shows that this path is hardwired into
>the binary. Does anyone know why or what this is?
>

Its hard to believe thats still in there! (well, maybe not)
"pjw" are the initials of one of the creators of awk (the "w"). I'd
spell his name but I know I'd get it wrong.

I found this string a while back (4/5 years) while on a Mascomp Real-Time
Unix system at an old job (I was bored and string'ng everything in site :-).
If you create this file it then every time you run awk it will store stats
(I think the actual program that was run) in that file. 

Roland

-- 
Roland J. Schemers III              |            Networking Systems
Systems Programmer                  |            G16 Redwood Hall (415)-723-6740
Distributed Computing Group         |            Stanford, CA 94305-4122
Stanford University                 |            schemers@Slapshot.Stanford.EDU

Re: strange path hardwired in awk

#7326

Author: Marcus J Ranum
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1993 03:40

13 lines
997 bytes

>While looking through a more than usually verbose audit log,
>I noticed that awk attempts to open /crp/pjw/awkhist/awkhist.
>`strings /bin/awk' shows that this path is hardwired into
>the binary. Does anyone know why or what this is?

	Well, pwj is Peter Weinberger, the 'w' in "awk". I'd
be very surprised if this wasn't some kind of joke, though, since
a load of people have picked over the awk code since its inception.
I vaguely recall someone telling me that the version of nawk that
ships with ULTRIX is from Mortise Kern Systems, not the original
AT&T version, though I never bothered to check.

mjr.

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