diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | usr.bin/awk/awk.1 | 21 |
1 files changed, 19 insertions, 2 deletions
diff --git a/usr.bin/awk/awk.1 b/usr.bin/awk/awk.1 index 4be4b96cabce..b85efe9d87cd 100644 --- a/usr.bin/awk/awk.1 +++ b/usr.bin/awk/awk.1 @@ -131,8 +131,9 @@ and newlines are used as field separators This is convenient when working with multi-line records. .Pp An input line is normally made up of fields separated by whitespace, -or by the regular expression -.Va FS . +or by the extended regular expression +.Va FS +as described below. The fields are denoted .Va $1 , $2 , ... , while @@ -141,6 +142,22 @@ refers to the entire line. If .Va FS is null, the input line is split into one field per character. +While both gawk and mawk have the same behavior, it is unspecified in the +.St -p1003.1-2008 +standard. +If +.Va FS +is a single space, then leading and trailing blank and newline characters are +skipped. +Fields are delimited by one or more blank or newline characters. +A blank character is a space or a tab. +If +.Va FS +is a single character, other than space, fields are delimited by each single +occurrence of that character. +The +.Va FS +variable defaults to a single space. .Pp Normally, any number of blanks separate fields. In order to set the field separator to a single blank, use the |