[Chapter 11] 11.3 Commercial awks<

There are also several commercial versions of awk. In this section, we review the ones that we know about. Mortice Kern Systems (MKS) in Waterloo, Ontario (Canada)[9] supplies awk as part of the MKS Toolkit for MS-DOS/Windows, OS/2, Windows 95, and Windows NT. [9] Mortice Kern Systems, 185 Columbia Street West, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 5Z5, Canada. Phone: 1-800-265-2797 in North America, 1-519-884-2251 elsewhere. URL is The MKS version implements POSIX awk. It has the following extensions: is available. This function takes a string argument, and returns the numeric value of the first character in the string. It is similar to the function of the same name in Pascal. Thompson Automation Software[10] makes a version of awk (tawk)[11] for MS-DOS/Windows, Windows 95 and NT, and Solaris. Tawk is interesting on several counts. First, unlike other versions of awk, which are interpreters, tawk is a compiler. Second, tawk comes with a screen-oriented debugger, written in awk! The source for the debugger is included. Third, tawk allows you to link your compiled program with arbitrary functions written in C. Tawk has received rave reviews in the [10] Thompson Automation Software, 5616 SW Jefferson, Portland OR 97221 U.S.A. Phone: 1-800-944-0139 within the U.S., 1-503-224-1639 elsewhere. [11] Michael Brennan, in the manpage, makes the following statement: "Implementors of the AWK language have shown a consistent lack of imagination when naming their programs." interface that acts like POSIX awk,