Show HN: Cppawk

What is cppawk?

cppawk is a miniature shell script that is historical bask in awk. It invokes
the C preprocessor (GNU cpp) on the Awk code and calls see.

cppawk understands the basic Awk alternatives bask in -F and -v, and additionally
realize total cpp alternatives bask in -I and -Dmacro=price.

There could be a man web page with the total critical parts.

To illustrate, if we elaborate a file known as awkloop.h which has these contents

#elaborate awkloop(file)  for (; getline 
#elaborate nextrec        continue
#elaborate rule(cond)     if (cond)

Then this invent of code is conceivable:

#embody "awkloop.h"

contrivance vital()
{
  awkloop ("/proc/mounts") {
    rule ($3 != "ext4") { nextrec }
    rule ($2 == "/") { print $1 }
  }
}

BEGIN {
  vital()
}

Now we beget implemented a facsimile of an Awk input scanning loop interior a contrivance
with moderately syntactic sugar.

Why?

• Why no longer?

• You perceive Awk. You perceive C preprocessing interior out. Now use two issues
  that you know, collectively, in glaring techniques.

• Awks varied than GNU Awk beget downhearted reinforce for making a program out of
  quite a lot of recordsdata. No assemble meta-programming, or conditional alternative
  of code.

• Totally different minor advantages: Awk has no feedback varied than from a #
  character to the tip of the line. You procure /... */ feedback
  with cppawk, and additionally #if 0 … #endif for immediate
  disabling code.

But GNU Awk has @embody?

• GNU Awk’s @embody is no longer essentially a beefy preprocessor. There are no longer any conditional
  expressions, and no macros.

• It is some distance best implemented in GNU Awk.

• It provides no capacity to buy the total included output.

• The capacity @embody searches for recordsdata is pass to cpp. GNU Awk’s
  embody search is driven by the AWKPATH variable which brings in the total
  disadvantages shared by shared by PATH-bask in variables. In distinction cpp
  implements the acquainted habits that an #embody "..." directive is
  resolved relative to the listing of the file which comprises that
  #embody directive. No configuration is required for a program to search out
  all of its included gadgets.

I use awk on embedded techniques with out a cpp!

Although packaged that implies, cppawk doesn’t beget to be historical as an interpreter
which preprocesses and runs the code. Preprocessed code will seemingly be captured with
the --prepro-best risk, and then transferred to a target system for
execution with its Awk.

Tip: it’ll be a edifying conception to tweak cppawk in say that it doesn’t elaborate the
__gawk__ symbol, in case your target system’s Awk is no longer essentially GNU Awk.